The Earth Summit was the first occasion that business and industry have played an important and constructive role in the run-up to a global UN conference.

UNCED Secretary-General Strong had appointed Swiss industrialist Stephan Schmidheiny to be his principal adviser on business and industry. Schmidheiny invited key chief executive officers from five continents to join his Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD). Some of the better- known of the 48 companies represented - by officers representing themselves rather than their companies- include ABB, Ceiba- Geigy, Chevron, Du Pont, Mitsubishi, Nippon Steel, Nisson, Shell, 3M and Volkswagen.

By the beginning of Rio, the Council had produced a 35O-page report which was commercially published in six languages as a book entitled Changing Course: a Global Business Perspective on Development and the Environment. The Council held a meeting in Rio and a press conference before the Summit began proper (as did the much larger International Chamber of Commerce: ICC). The Council supported "free markets" and "market forces", but argued that capitalism could not survive if those markets did not reflect environmental as well as economic truth. They called for stricter enforcement of the 'polluter pays' principle, and for prices which reflect environmental costs. They urged governments to consider greater use of "economic instruments", such as environmental taxes and saleable pollution permits, rather than command-and- control regulations.

Another main message was that there are a number of trends working in the world which will encourage businesses toward economical and environmental excellence. Those firms which are not "eco-efficient" - able to maximise added value while minimising resource use and pollution - are essentially unviable and will not remain competitive for long.

This message was psychologically very powerful, and also contradicted President Bush's expressed fears that environmentalism would make firms less competitive. So the Council's views were picked up in most of the world's major newspapers. Schmidheiny and his staff then spent the first week of the Summit doing what other NGOs were doing, lobbying to have their positions accepted. They spoke at Global Forum presentations, lunched with World Bank leaders, breakfasted with US senators, and spoke to outside gatherings, such as the Junior Chamber of Commerce and a group of "spiritual and parliamentary leaders".

This exercise was very successful in terms of attention and column inches, but of course it is much harder to judge its effect upon the Summit. Chapter 30 of Agenda 21 deals in a rather vague and summary fashion with business and industry. With that exception, there were few UNCED documents which affected business directly, while the Council's conclusions tended to be addressed more to individual businesses and to individual governments.