Home / News & Events / Archive
Gearing Up, a new SustainAbility report launched on 24 June in New York at
the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit, concludes that despite
achieving impressive momentum the corporate responsibility (CR) movement is
bumping up against real limits. Some responsible businesses have scratched
the surface of global issues like climate change and HIV/AIDS, but just as many
work to maintain the status quo. The efforts of business, in combination
with government and civil society, are quite simply being outpaced by the
problems. It’s time for change.
SustainAbility’s report –
subtitled From corporate responsibility to good governance and scalable
solutions – concludes that the CR movement is constrained by too narrow a focus
and the lack of appropriate links to wider global, regional and national
governance frameworks. Where links between companies and government do
exist, they are often dominated by regressive lobbying – the automotive industry
lobbying against effective action on climate change, for example, or fast food
companies lobbying to slow controls on their industry. As such,
industry or corporate public affairs activities are often at odds with the
declared CR initiatives of the same business.
Gearing Up is an
insightful assessment of business progress by people who work with
business. On climate change, the report notes that a few companies have
made significant cuts in CO2 emissions, but globally emissions have increased
8.9% since 1990, against a 60% reduction target. On the health front, some
companies are helping to fight HIV/AIDS by providing anti-retrovirals to their
employees. Yet in the poorest countries, less than 10% of the six million
people who need such drugs currently get them. Too often, it’s a case of
too little, too late.
In order to make real progress, and reverse
the unfolding backlash against globalization, the authors call on Global Compact
participants and other leading companies to help drive system-level change.
Business is generally encouraged to stay out of politics, but the challenge
business leaders face is increasingly political. "Corporate responsibility
has the potential to bring about positive change on a much larger scale", agrees
Georg Kell, Executive Head of the Global Compact. "But to get there, the
CR movement will need to focus on two things simultaneously: achieving critical
mass across all industry sectors, and connecting private actions with public
policy efforts so that root causes of problems are tackled. CR cannot
operate in isolation any longer."
To make these
connections in a legitimate way, companies must be more transparent and
consistent in their public policy positions – and they will need to involve
other interested parties. The report, which assesses case studies on
climate change, HIV/AIDS, chronic diseases and corruption, encourages business
leaders to:
- Increase transparency and demonstrate real progress in integrating CR into core business operations
- Work alongside civil society and governments in ‘progressive alliances’ to achieve public policy changes that directly address social and environmental challenges
- Champion policies that ensure more responsible forms of globalization.
John
Elkington, Chair of SustainAbility, says, “It’s uncomfortable, but the corporate
responsibility movement stands at a watershed. Recent corporate scandals
have forced regulators and investors to focus back on basic issues of financial
integrity. That’s a problem. If we want the benefits of
globalization, business leaders must align their companies’ lobbying with their
corporate responsibility activities. They need to help governments to act
courageously in such areas as climate change, corruption and
HIV/AIDS.”
NOTES TO EDITORS
Founded in 1987,
SustainAbility (www.sustainability.com) is the world’s
leading specialist consultancy on business strategy, corporate responsibility
and sustainable development.
The Global Compact is a voluntary
corporate responsibility initiative of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, which
aims to mainstream ten human rights, labour, environmental and anti-corruption
principles in business activities around the world and to catalyse actions in
support of UN goals.
Please click here to download a PDF version of the report.
