And the award goes to…

At last night’s Ethical Corporation Awards, a celebration of responsible business practices around the globe, Ethical Corporation’s contributing editor and Rainforest Alliance board member Brendan May presented the Lifetime Achievement Award. Here, he writes about the experience and the recipient: the Rainforest Alliance’s very own chief of sustainable agriculture, Chris Wille.

It was an honour to be asked to present this year’s Ethical Corporation Lifetime Achievement Award. It was all the more exciting because I’ve

Pictured: Chris Wille, chief of sustainable agriculture at the Rainforest Alliance

been lucky enough to work closely with this year’s recipient for the past few years, and have seen firsthand why our winner is such a worthy one.

There have been many distinguished environmentalists over recent decades. Some of them are very famous — many more are not. Some of the most famous environmentalists make a lot of noise — sometimes, their actual long term achievements for conservation and social justice are harder to quantify.  Then, there are the environmentalists we might call the quiet heroes. They work diligently behind the scenes, getting things done. Most of them aren’t famous.

Last night’s honoree is a quiet hero, but one who has done more than most to make environmentalism and business walk hand in hand. Let me tell you a little bit about our winner, Chris Wille, chief of the sustainable agriculture at the Rainforest Alliance…

After several years at the National Audubon Society, Chris Wille co-founded the Rainforest Alliance nearly a quarter of a century ago. He sat on the first Rainforest Alliance board of directors, but soon stepped down from the board, moved to Costa Rica, and became one of the organization’s first three employees. He then spent 20 years in Costa Rica, leading a range of new initiatives, from sustainable agriculture to tourism, forestry and carbon. Today, the Rainforest Alliance has more than 350 staff members and works with farmers, foresters, tour operators, businesses, governments, consumers, teachers and students in over 70 countries.

Chris Wille has been behind the creation of the global gold standards for sustainable farming, forestry and tourism. As he often puts it – the standards that were missing from the conservation world were those that protected workers and wildlife in equal measure. Without Chris Wille, those standards would either not exist, or would be significantly weaker than they are today.

Chris Wille can rightly claim (not that he ever would), the architecture of some of the most iconic moments in sustainable business history: Chiquita Bananas’ move from pariah to sustainability hero… Vast sector changes across coffee, tea, cocoa, sugarcane and citrus farming… The shifting of procurement practices by Kraft, Unilever, McDonalds, Nestlé and Mars…. Many of the companies represented at this year’s Responsible Business Summit are here partly because Chris Wille’s groundbreaking thinking has given them a new way of doing business, and a new story to tell.

But it’s not just about transforming business.  Chris can claim a significant part of the credit for the move toward more sustainable farming practices across Latin America.  As another environmentalist put it to me recently: “When Chris arrived in Costa Rica in 1989, it was customary for farmers to throw their waste into rivers and for workers to live on the farms that were regularly sprayed with illegal pesticides. It was common for farmers to cut down however many trees they wanted, whenever they wanted, in order to expand their croplands.  By the time Chris Wille left and moved back to his native Oregon in 2010, all that had changed.”

Chris’s quiet, humble, self-deprecating style is deceptive. His decency, kindness and integrity all conceal a commercial acumen that has motivated several major multinationals to move from viewing environmentalists with suspicion to realizing that they can be the most valuable of allies. He has never compromised his deeply held conservation principles. But in grasping the opportunities of working with the very companies who were part of the problem, he can claim his rightful place as one of the true global leaders in the history of responsible business. He is driven by moral concern for the planet’s well being, but smart enough to be shamelessly practical in the ways he sets about improving it.  He is living proof that you can have ideals but also work with what exists rather than just bemoaning what doesn’t. I’ve learned more from Chris Wille about sustainability than from anyone I’ve ever worked with.

Chris isn’t hungry for fame, awards or accolades. Quite the opposite. He probably took some persuading to accept this personal award.  He only wants good outcomes for biodiversity and farming communities. This lifetime achievement award is recognition of his vast contribution, over many decades, toward those better outcomes.

So Chris, thank you for all your work over the decades, and congratulations from your many friends and admirers on this richly deserved award.