Key proposals to step up the fight against corruption
To mark the International Anti-Corruption Day on December 8, leading experts brought together by the World Economic Forum developed proposals to help tackle corruption. Their report ‘Raising Our Game: Next Steps for Business, Government and Civil Society to Fight Corruption’ recommends that businesses empower ethics officers to prevent bribery through anti-corruption programmes, such as the Partnering Against Corruption Initiative (PACI). The report also called for governments to create a level playing field by ratifying and fully implementing the United Nations Convention Against Corruption into national law. The estimated cost of corruption worldwide is more than 5% of global GDP with over $1 trillion lost in bribes each year.
Amnesty calls for Peru to suspend oil companies working on indigenous land
Amnesty International (AI) is ‘urgently’ pressing the Peruvian government to suspend companies whose work could affect the rights of indigenous people. AI makes the recommendation in a new report, ‘Peru: Bagua, six months on’, published on December 12, six months after armed police attacked a peaceful indigenous protest in northern Peru.
AI’s call comes after the government has granted more than 70% of the Peruvian Amazon to oil and gas companies, and has announced plans to increase that figure early in 2010. It echoes a recommendation made by the United Nations earlier this year when it told Peru it should not allow oil and gas drilling on indigenous peoples’ land without their ‘informed consent’. Companies potentially affected include those working on land inhabited by uncontacted tribes, such as Perenco and Repsol-YPF.
Audi and Microsoft amongst those slammed for greenwashing
Consumers International, a global consumer watchdog group, has named Audi, easyjet, BP, CO2isgreen and Microsoft as winners of the international Bad Company Awards 2009. Consumers International asserted that people around the globe have a ‘right to true and trusted information about the environmental impact of products and services,’ and condemned the companies highlighted by the Awards for ‘dubious corporate green claims’. Audi was slammed for implying that driving a car could be as green as riding a bicycle, whilst BP was condemned for claiming to care about greenhouse gas emission while, according to CI, ‘dropping its investment in renewable energy’. Easyjet’s continued claims that flying on one of its planes was less damaging to the planet that driving a hybrid car were also slated, as was Microsoft for highlighting the small energy savings associated with its new Windows 7 operating system, while suggesting that customers buy a new computer to run it on.
Big businesses fail to protect the rights of workers in their global supply chains
EIRIS’ latest research, released on December 17, identified corporate breaches of the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) conventions on child labour, forced labour, trade union rights and equal opportunities in the supply chains of some of the world’s biggest companies. Based on EIRIS’ Convention Watch research, the report ‘A Risky Business? Managing core labour standards in company supply chains’ finds that 45% of companies analysed have no policy or management systems in place to protect labour standards in their supply chain and fail to report on the issue. The consumer industry demonstrates the most advanced response to human rights breaches, and is also the most likely to have been accused of such breaches and to respond to such allegations. Two consumer industry case studies of supply chain allegations are examined in the report, in relation to Gap and Primark. Products which have the greatest risk of poor labour standards associated with their manufacture include clothing, footwear, toys, consumer electronic items and some agricultural products
Global Witness urges government to act on human rights report
On December 16, Global Witness welcomed a report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) and called on the UK government to heed the recommendations and do more to prevent UK companies operating overseas from being complicit in human rights abuses. The report, ‘Any of our business? Human rights and the UK private sector’, lists several companies operating in conflict areas as being involved in grave human rights abuses. These include Afrimex and Amalgamated Metals Corporation (AMC), companies which trade in minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), about which Global Witness gave written and verbal submissions to the committee. The report’s found that there was an undue reliance on voluntary standards, which are often not enforced, and said that greater emphasis should be placed on legislative remedies.
Recession is the catalyst for a decade of business change
According to a CBI report released recently, the recession has raised concerns about commercial models, supply chains and finance that will reshape business behaviour well into the next decade. The CBI report, ‘The Shape of Business – The Next 10 Years’, flags four key areas of UK business where fresh approaches will develop because of the downturn. The first area is credit, as firms look to alternatives to debt-driven growth to protect investment and innovation. Secondly, the report finds that companies will reorganise and re-examine their approach to working with partners – from suppliers to universities, and even competitors. Thirdly, CBI outline how sustainability and ethics will become more integrated into the business model as firms seek to improve accountability and corporate citizenship to attract and retain customers and staff. Finally, a more flexible workforce will evolve, assisted by developments in technology and training. For some firms that might mean a smaller core workforce and a larger ‘flexiforce’.
New online forum for UN Business & Human Rights mandate
On December 1, the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) on business and human rights, John Ruggie, launched a global online forum. The purpose of the forum is to gather input for the SRSG as he develops guiding principles to operationalize the UN ‘Protect, Respect, Remedy’ framework, as requested by the Human Rights Council. The UN ‘Protect, Respect, Remedy’ framework is made up of three pillars: the State duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties, including business; the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, which means to avoid infringing on the rights of others; and greater access by victims to effective remedy, judicial and non-judicial.
Contact: United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on business & human rights
Businesses must address role in human rights abuses
The Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB) launched its Top 10 list of emerging business and human rights challenges for 2010 to mark International Human Rights Day on December 10. ‘This is a call to raise corporate standards and strengthen public policy to ensure that the activities of companies do not contribute to human rights abuses,’ said John Morrison, IHRB Executive Director. Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and Chair of IHRB’s Advisory Board said, ‘New incentives are needed to improve transparency, learning and quality assurance across much of the work aimed at supporting business in acting responsibly.’
Nestlé UK announced on December 4 that Kit Kat would be certified Fairtrade in the UK and Ireland. Fairtrade certification of Kit Kat will aim to facilitate long term direct commitments to cocoa co-operatives including additional payments for the farmers to invest in community or business development projects of their own choice, such as improving healthcare and schools. In response to the announcement, Boycott Nestle, the campaigning blog asserted that the good news was only partial, as the Fairrade mark would only apply to Nestlé’s four fingered Kit-Kat. Mike Brady, Campaigns and Networking Coordinator at Baby Milk Action, said: ‘Nestlé is already using a Fairtrade mark on a token product representing just 0.02% of its coffee purchase to try to divert criticism of its trading practices which have been blamed for driving down prices for millions of coffee farmers.’
Survey shows disconnect between the strategic value and measurement of sustainability initiatives
A survey release on December 8 of corporate sustainability leaders shows that while sustainability initiatives are seen as having significant strategic value to organizations, reporting on these initiatives is challenging. The survey found that 72% of respondents believed that boards of directors place a high priority on sustainability and 74% say their organizations link their sustainability initiatives to company strategy. However, more than half of the respondents also said they thought measurement for the initiatives was lacking. The findings are based on a survey co-sponsored by Crowe Horwath, and the Center for Business Excellence (CBE) at MiamiUniversity’s Farmer School of Business. Of the survey’s 178 respondents, 40 percent had annual revenues above $1 billion, while 60 percent were below $1 billion.
One in six managers see climate change as priority
Most managers recognise climate change as an important issue for business but fail to do anything about it. This is the key finding of an extensive survey conducted by trade body the Chartered Management Institute (CMI). The report, called ‘Lean and Green’ and released on December 2, suggests that the number of managers who plan to make climate change a priority in 2010 is just shy of one in six (16%). The CMI findings also confirm that young, junior managers are more enthusiastic about tackling climate change while those at the top are less anxious to embrace the opportunities and challenges in this area, with just over half (54%) of directors identified as ‘climate change cynics’. To encourage managers to take up the low carbon challenge, CMI is calling for all UK organisations to have a green team in place and active, by 5 June 2010 – World Environment Day.
Number of S&P 100 firms producing sustainability reports jumps by a third
The number of S&P 100 companies producing sustainability reports with performance data jumped by more than a third in the past year, according to a new report, released on December 17 from the Sustainable Investment Research Analyst Network (SIRAN), a working group of the Social Investment Forum (SIF). Furthermore, 93 of the S&P 100 now provide at least some sustainability information on their web sites. ‘For most of the past five years, in addition to sustainability reports, we have also seen a gradual increase in the number of companies adopting the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) reporting framework,’ said Sharon Squillace, RiskMetrics’ Research Analyst and Manager of the S&P 100 Project. “Last year, however, the number of companies referencing GRI in their reporting jumped by an impressive 25%.”
More than eight out of ten grocery suppliers step up investment in sustainability
New research, released on December 2 from IGD, reveals that 85% of grocery and food manufacturers have either stepped up their investment in sustainability, or kept it the same during the recession, despite just over two-fifths (42%) believing it is not yet high enough on the shopper agenda. Three-quarters (76%) of suppliers think that sustainability will play a greater role in their trading relationships with retailers in the near future, but just over 40% view increased global competition for resource (41%) and more complex legislation (40%) as two of the biggest threats to wider business sustainability in 2010 and beyond
The business response to climate change is described as “timid” and “sleepy” by two of six expert commentators interviewed for a new report from ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) and GRI (Global Reporting Initiative), published on December 7. The report, called ‘Getting It: Expert Perspectives on the Corporate Response to Climate Change’, interviewed six business and sustainability experts about the climate change and business debate, including Professor Mervyn King, Chair of GRI’s board, Paul Dickinson, CEO of the Carbon Disclosure Project and Martin Hiller, Climate Change Communications Manager for WWF. Comments included the belief that a collective failure to ‘get’ climate change is likely to mean the end of the world as we know it today. However, Paul Dickinson is optimistic that business – after a slow start – will ‘get it’ in time. Lord Turner, Chair of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change and Chair of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), calls for a clear legal framework within which developed countries commit to strengthening their reduction targets, saying this is the foundation stone for an effective global response to the challenges presented by climate change.
Contact: Global Reporting Initiative
Ernst & Young report on SABMiller’s contributions to the European economy
An Ernst and Young study, released on December 21, has reviewed SABMiller’s economic, regional and social impact in Europe. The work looked at the impact of the production and sale of SABMiller‘s beers in Russia and the nine EU countries where it operates.The Ernst and Young report has found that for every person employed at the 23 European SABMiller breweries, an additional 15 jobs are generated in other industries including agriculture, transport, retail and advertising. In total this means that nearly a quarter of a million jobs are directly or indirectly related to the production and sale of SABMiller’s beers. The company’s breweries in Europe sold approximately 45 million hectolitres of beer in 2008 – the equivalent of nearly eight billion pints. In turn these generated 3.83 billion Euros in government revenues from sources such as excise, VAT, social security contributions and personal income taxes paid by both SABMiller and supply chain employees.
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