“Did the bombs not put you off?” Habib, a slightly overweight young man shouts in my ear, toppling over a little before correcting himself with an outstretched arm, at the end of which is perched a half consumed gin and tonic. We are standing on the edge of the dance floor in BO18, a former bomb shelter redeveloped into one of Beirut’s hottest new night clubs and tonight is 80′s night. Before I can reply, the crowd cheer triumphantly as the DJ introduces another classic - Bon Jovi - Living on a Prayer.

When that song was number 1 in late 1986, BO18 was still a shelter, Lebanon was still in the middle of a bloody civil war and much of Beirut lay in ruins. Car bombs in the city were frequent occurrences as civilians were targeted by all sides. In the last 20 years, since the end of the war, the city has largely regenerated and reinvented itself. There are still a few older, derelict and bullet riddled buildings obstinately clinging on in the city’s skyline, a grim reminder of those bad old days, but the vast majority are modern high rise hotels.

Beirut’s tourist industry has worked hard to develop a reputation as one of the world’s party capitals. The city’s nightclubs are among the most luxurious and glamorous to be seen anywhere, many are set on the roofs of the city’s new hotels with spectacular views over the mountains and the Mediterranean Sea. Their clientele are the young, the beautiful and the rich not only from Lebanon but from across Europe and the Arab World.

But that was until last week when a car bomb detonated in the nearby district of Achrifiyeh killing 8 people and wounding dozens of others. Then the clubs closed and the partying stopped - but only temporarily. Now only one week later, Lebanon’s nightclubs are open again and the crowds are returning albeit that they are predominately made up of locals.

People in Beirut fear that the latest terror attack will put visitors off coming to the city. Lebanon’s economy is heavily dependent on tourism and a return to the old reputation of a city blighted by bombs and war would be a disaster for local businesses. “What else can we do?” Asks Habib. “We must show the world that Beirut carries on as normal. We want nothing to do with Syria’s problems, look around you, the young generation don’t want to go back to the old days.”

This view is shared by another young Lebanese man I met at the site of last week’s blast. Mark is the same age as Habib and also born in Beirut. He is a clean cut and handsome young man who looks slightly out of place in a pair of blue dungarees. But these are the uniform of the Lebanese NGO, Offrejoie or The Joy of Giving. Mark tells me that he is a banker but has asked his employer for an extended period of absence so that he can assist with the clean up of the aftermath of last week’s blast.

He has just returned from an initial site inspection. “It is pure destruction, my friend.” He explains to me. “The smell is the first you notice.” Food has been rotting in fridges long since disconnected from electricity supplies and the pungent smell of decay hangs in the air. Buildings have had roofs and windows torn away and debris litters the streets.

Mark joined Offrejoie when he was 10 years old. Founded during the war in 1985, the organisation draws young Christian, Sunni and Shia volunteers from all over the country. It’s mission is to promote cohesion between regions and religions; to say “no” to war and instead work together to build a new Lebanon. Now that Beirut’s police and military investigators have finished at the scene of the blast, Mark and his 400 co-volunteers, will spend the next month undertaking the difficult job of making the area habitable again for its returning survivors.

“We don’t want Americans or Europeans to come and do this work.” Says Mark. “And we don’t want bombs and war to be the image the world’s media presents of Lebanon. So we will do this work ourselves. And when we are finished, then there will be time to party.”

New TV series will be out around the world on the National Geographic Channel later in the year. But for those lucky enough to be living in Canada, there’s a sneaky preview - Scam City will air on Travel+Escape from June 3rd at 10pm.

Here’s the press release…

Scam City crosses the globe visiting ten of the world’s most popular cities. A travel show with a twist we expose the darker side of tourism: the scammers and con men circling like sharks on the fringes of the tourist trade. Presenter Conor Woodman will meet with them, going undercover and into their lives to discover how scammers profit from hard-earned travel money. He will discover the local specialties of crime against travellers – every bit as distinct as the local foods and dialects.

And a preview piece in a Canadian mag - Toro..

TORO - SCAM CITY

It’s testament to the sheer boys own adventurousness of this book that it took me thirty pages to work out it wasn’t fiction.

David Grann sets out to follow in the footsteps of Colonel Percy Fawcett, the “Shakleton of the Amazon.” In doing so, he weaves together his own personal journey and a biography of the Victorian explorer who charted much of what we now know about the world’s most impenetrable jungle.

Colonel Fawcett was convinced that hidden somewhere deep within the jungle was a huge pre-Colombian civilization often referred to in legend as ‘El Dorado’ but known to Fawcett simply as Z.

Through first hand accounts meticulously pieced together from Fawcett’s correspondence home and commentary of the day, Grann has almost invented a new genre - the autobiography/thriller.

If you’re interested in the history of the Amazon or simply a fan of old fashioned adventure stories then I’d recommend this highly.

We’ve all been there. You go to a party with a bunch of your mates. You meet a group of girls and spend the evening drinking and dancing.

And after that?

The end of the night comes round and you and your mates have all had one too many, the girls have drifted away and it’s time to go home. But wait. One of your mates (let’s call him China) is still there on the dance floor getting it on with the last remaining girl at the party. You have no choice but to to wait for him to cop off/get her number etc while your hangover slowly but surely begins to kick in.

And there we have the global economy.

It’s 2011 and most of us were ready to leave the party 3 years ago but we’ve been waiting for China to catch us up. And the reason that we haven’t been able to simply leave without him is oil.

Global recessions are not new. We’ve had and survived many of them before but there’s been something fundamentally different about this one. Usually a global recession is followed by a drop in the global oil price. As demand slows, the price of oil drops, and as it does so, it simultaneously enables industry to reboot and begin to build again. But this time we’re 3 years in and the oil price is still at $125 per barrel. Why? Because China’s still on the dancefloor.

China’s (and much of Asia’s) growing economies now account for nearly 50% of demand for global oil production, which has enabled the OPEC countries to maintain high oil prices despite the troubles in the Western economies. We are the glum teenagers sitting round the edge of the dance floor waiting for the music to stop.

But there are signs that the DJ may be winding down and about to play his last tune.

At last, China’s economy is showing signs that it may be faltering. If it does then lower demand for oil from the East will quickly follow and the oil price may begin to fall giving Western industry and agriculture a much needed break.

Global recessions will continue to come and go. But the growing influence of China and the rest of Asia it seems, has added a new dimension - the more people at the party, the longer it goes on for. Unfortunately, the longer it goes on for, the bigger the hangover.

This post also appeared as a guest blogpost on the SustainAbility website - here

A World Without Labels

Imagine a company which always paid its workers a fair wage, only sourced materials from sustainable sources, created minimal environmental impact and operated a system of offsets so as to be 100% carbon neutral.

How would this company convince you as an ethical shopper to buy its products?

Well, the way the market place currently works is that it would cover its packaging with third party labels - a fair-trade logo would cover the wages, an Forestry Stewardship Council or Rainforest Alliance label might cover the sustainability angle and a black footprint with a big fat 0% in it would support its carbon credentials.

But there seems to be something wrong if a company that is behaving in the most ethical way possible has to rely on others to make that known. By devolving responsibility to third parties, it is tacitly admitting to not being able to convince customers of all the good things it is doing alone. And at the same time, the company is missing an opportunity to associate its ethical behaviour with its own label. Why is that?

The simple answer that is often trotted out is that business can’t be trusted. The argument goes like this - business is inherently evil and will lie and cheat in any way possible to distract us from all the bad things it does in the pursuit of maximum profits, which is why we need third parties to continually scrutinise on our behalf as consumers.

But this now seems rather an old fashioned view of things.

First, let’s give credit where it’s due. Organisations such as Fairtrade and the Rainforest Alliance have been great standard bearers for the ethical consumer movement. They have brought many issues concerning social justice and environmental impact to the fore and for that, they should be applauded. But have they now served their purpose?

Let’s take an example. For a number of years Cadbury’s have supported a community project in Ghana called the Cocoa Partnership. Through education and micro-financing, Cadbury’s help farmers to increase their yields, improve their communities and generally live happier more prosperous lives. It costs them around £4.5m per year and they’ve signed up for 10 years. Doesn’t that sound great? Well, yes and that’s because it is. But had you ever heard of it before now? Probably not.

Compare that with Cadbury’s decision to ‘go Fairtrade’ in 2009. The motives of the Fairtrade movement are similar to those of the Cocoa Partnership. The mechanism is different. When Fairtrade get companies such as Cadbury’s to sign up, they must commit to a minimum price guarantee plus a little bit on the top called the ‘social premium’. This mechanism was designed when global commodity prices were low but now looks rather dated. The problem is that the minimum price guarantees for ingredients such as cocoa and sugar have been redundant for years because market prices have soared and they look likely to stay that way for the long term. So the overall cost to companies like Cadbury’s is only the social premium, which works out at less than one quarter of one cent per bar - considerably less than their commitment to the Cocoa Partnership. Cadbury’s use both mechanisms to commit investment to cocoa farming in Ghana, but because customers rarely look into the sums involved and prefer instead just to look for the labels, they risk missing the really good stuff. I bet you’d never heard about the Cocoa Partnership before now, whereas you thought you knew all about Fairtrade.

Herein lies a major problem for companies such as Cadbury’s, which are trying to act responsibly and deservedly take credit for doing so. Big chunky projects that can create truly sustainable progress in the developing world continue to go unnoticed because the marketplace is telling consumers to focus instead on the third party labels that aren’t nearly as effective in delivering change.

So what is the solution? The onus must fall on the big brands to take control of the agenda. There are now many many businesses engaging in truly innovative and creative programmes to bring about positive change within their supply chains. OK, they may not quite have reached the levels of the imaginary company I described earlier, but they are doing things that we need to know about.

Brands are very good at communicating with us when they’re offering a new product or an improved service and wouldn’t dream of relying on third parties to do that for them. So why not employ the same talents to telling us about the sustainable, ethical and great environmental stuff they’re doing too?

It’s a big step for most brands to open their doors and say ‘look, we were doing this badly before but now we’re doing it a whole lot better.’ But the time is right for them to do exactly that. It’s time that brands started showing consumers that they stand not just for monetary value but also for social and environmental value too and they shouldn’t need anyone else to do it for them.