In the 90s, large and reckless corporations learned that they didn't always have to actually clean up their acts, that it was often enough to simply claim to be green. This "greenwashing" has become less effective with use, and with the rise of the Net, and with stronger communications strategies on the part of enviros.
In the last five years, of course, the debate has shifted to a new arena: debating the merits and perils of globalization and globalism. In this new arena, the aim is for those with questionable agendas to claim to be on the side of the world's poor. Call it world-washing.
There's no better example of the practice than A World Connected (a project of the corporate-libertarian "Institute for Humane Studies"), which has about the same relationship to real journalism on sustainable development as Joe Camel does to your family doctor.
Here's a short-list of the things A World Connected tries to world-wash as being better for the world's poor: greater use of coal-fired power plants, tourism in Myanmar, the spread of McDonald's franchises, outsourcing jobs, frankenfoods, foreign aid and child labor. Here's the kicker, though -- they cloak almost every one of these changes under a mantle of social entrpreneurship, without, of course, talking much about the real heroes that movement has generated, most of whom are deeply committed to justice and sustainability and would be appalled at the gross appropriation of their work here.
Unfortunately, this won't be the last effort to world-wash bad ideas, but it is another indicator that the phrase "social entrepreneur" needs a make-over, and quickly.
