The First CSR Sustainability Report (1649)
When did CSR reporting start? When was sustainability reporting first introduced? These questions are often answered with reference to the twentieth century. But the truth is even more fascinating. Because the origins of the world’s first ever corporate sustainability & CSR report can be traced to 1649.
Jan de Baen captured the Lords Seventeen - the Board of the Dutch East India Company in 1682 (West Fries Museum, Hoorn, The Netherlands)
The first ever corporate sustainability report
A Dutch ship, the New Haarlem, was wrecked off Table Bay on 25 March 1647. It resulted in the first European settlement in the Cape that became Cape Town. What’s less well known is that the shipwreck also led to the writing of the world’s first corporate sustainability report. The historical origins have fascinating insights for today.
An enterprising Dutch merchant named Leendert Jansz was amongst those who stayed behind and help build a temporary base at Cape Colony. Jansz returned to Holland the following year with a proposal for his employer. The Dutch East India Company, the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC), was rapidly becoming the largest corporation in the world. Alongside another merchant named Mattijs Proot, they wrote what was called a Remonstration. This report was presented to the Gentlemen Seventeen, effectively the VOC’s governing body, in July 1649 and proposed establishing a permanent fortress and garden at the Cape for the “gain and profit of the Honourable Company”.
What makes the Remonstration so unique is that it didn’t just set out the economics of the venture. It detailed the social and environmental impacts and dependencies that favoured it too. Jansz and Proot explained how the Cape peninsula could be transformed into a capitalist haven based on sensitive ecology and responsible community relations, for the “gain and profit” of the company and its stockholders.
A business case for sustainability
Buried in the Cape Town Repository Archives their report listed the “many kinds of fruit”, the “very good and productive” soil conditions, the “abundance” of water sources that could be “guided at will”, a “super abundance of fish”, “all kinds of birds by thousands”, a “good quantity” of whale oil (a valuable fuel) and nearby wood for construction. It also catalogued the “cattle and sheep” that could be “procured, by barter from the natives…at a sufficiently cheap rate” to make cheese, butter and milk to replenish passing ships.
The Remonstration outlined what today would be called a business case for natural resource management. The natural abundance of the Cape was portrayed as an asset for the company to exploit. With such ecological riches, there could be a “material saving to the Company” as ships’ provisions would be replenished more cost effectively. Their report also explained how the welfare of the sailors stopping off on voyages could be improved too. A “multitude of sick” would be “restored to health” through the abundant fruit at the Cape (scurvy, a lack of vitamin C, was killing more sailors than shipwrecks at the time). The refreshed ships would return to Holland more quickly, leading to “a perceptible advantage in wages, for the time saved”.
What makes this document so fascinating is that Jansz and Proot noted a distinctly modern angle to what today we’d call sustainable development. The seventeenth century is often thought of a time when nature’s resources were exploited by colonial capitalism, without little regard for long-run sustainability. But Jansz and Proot were well aware of resource sensitivity in 1649. Further out in the south Atlantic, the island of St Helena had become the usual stopping point for Dutch ships. Their Remonstration described the “negligence of the captains” stopping there who “do not think of those who come after them”. On St Helena, they noted how supplies of wild pigs had depleted “year after year” until “nothing whatsoever can be had there”. The few remaining apples and lemons were “plucked by the English” before the Dutch arrived each season. St Helena, in short, was suffering from a tragedy of the commons: a free-for all that fuelled resource depletion. By contrast, the new Cape settlement was portrayed as a highly profitable, ecological paradise – provided it was managed carefully by sensible Dutch captains.
Corporate Social Responsibility
Next, the report outlined the social considerations, including relations with the local community. Whilst some had characterised the locals as “savages and cannibals”, their experience was that this was a “popular error”. Jansz and Proot called for a fairer understanding of local population based on treating them as fellow humans. Although they admitted that some Dutch had been killed (when they had shot the locals’ cattle without paying for them), the authors wrote that they “firmly believe” that any Dutch farmers “robbed” like that at home would have acted the same. Their proposed that trade was possible with the local clan “with perfect amity”. A “good commander, who would treat the natives kindly” and pay them fairly “would not have the slightest cause to fear them”.
Sustainable resource management. Good relations with the local community. This seventeenth century sustainability report sounds remarkably modern. All that was missing to make it award-winning in ESG World today would be some real numbers with a quantified business case.
The 1649 study concluded by quantifying the “expected…profits”. It listed staff costs of 60 to 70 men on yearly pay (10,000 guilders) alongside 3,500 guilders for provisions and 500 guilders for “munitions of war” (a lower figure than expected as cannon could be recovered from the Haarlem wreckage). A fortress and garden should swiftly be established for the “gain and profit of the Honorable Company”, they concluded. The Lords Seventeen agreed and accepted their proposal.
Greenwashing
But there was a twist. The first ever sustainability report was fatally flawed. Despite the detailed descriptions, quantified metrics and careful case for managing community and environment, the dream of abundance and peaceful coexistence was not to be. The report embellished the opportunity, spinning the positives and overlooking reality. It came unstuck due to a typical big business problem: failing to appreciate the local context.
The soils turned out to be less productive than described. European crops that were transplanted quickly succumbed to disease. Just like at St Helena, the resources were exploited: the local wildlife was wiped out. As for the community, relations quickly soured. The local Khoekhoe clans could not be persuaded to settle in agriculture for the benefit of the invaders. They were self-sufficient pastoralists who refused to barter their livestock and tend to farms. Slaves had to be imported to supply manual labour. Before long, the local tribes fought back against the Europeans. This set the stage for South Africa’s tumultuous future: a white settler society intent on frontier wars that decimated local penguin, whale, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, lions, leopards, jackal and other wild populations.
The lesson is that corporate sustainability impacts are complex, contextual and dynamic. It wasn’t that Jansz and Proot identified the wrong issues. All the ones that mattered to the prospects of the company were set out. Their materiality exercise was accurate. Their report failed to forecast how the company would interact, how the environment might change, how local people would respond. The first corporate sustainability report spun a great tale of “gain and profit” but oversimplified reality. In many ways, the first ever CSR report is also the first example of greenwashing.