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On Corporate Accountability and Critical Thinking
Related to this project: CSR Youth Network


Corporate accountability on sustainable activities demonstrates a willingness to further dialogue with stakeholders (people, customers and society in general) and increase transparency. The most commonly used media for accountability are reports, corporate social responsibility reports, annual reports etc. Those can be found for example on the website of the Global Compact (http://unglobalcompact.org/COP/notable_cops.html), corporate website or the Global Reporting Initiative website (http://www.globalreporting.org/NR/rdonlyres/E033E311-68E7-41F9-A97F-9F3B94F3FE40/4042/GRIReports19992010_14Apr2.xls)

Accountability is an effort to disclose balanced, accurate, unbiased information to stakeholders. However, being fully accountable is difficult for businesses, who in theory are meant to only seek short term profit and financial outcomes. Business mindset can encourage companies to take benefit from a better image or fake accountability (ex Green-washing or Blue Washing - ex. using the UN Global Compact (UNGC) as a branding tool - the UNGC is only a platform for businesses where civil society has very little to say).

What is good information? Knowing the truth of a company's actions is very difficult. Some company have fair, somewhat honest disclosure. There is of course a lot of hypocrisy in the field of CSR too. Doubt is always necessary as well as critical mindset.

Every people interested in the field should spend time knowing about how companies disclose, what civil society organizations say in their report (http://www.business-humanrights.org/). Being critical is important but should start people are informed of issues and existing initiatives (ex. accountability initiative such as the Global Reporting Initiative, the Carbon Disclosure Project, and many many more).

For critical thinking:
http://globalcompactcritics.blogspot.com/
http://www.corpwatch.org/
http://www.publiceye.ch/en/

April 18, 2010 | 12:24 PM Comments  0 comments



Corporate Social Responsibility in the Mining Sector in Canada


It goes without saying that Canada is a extremely rich country: 12th in the ranking of the World Economic Outlook Database-October 2009 from the International Monetary Fund.


According to the Government of Canada, "in 2008, over 75 percent of the world’s exploration and mining companies were headquartered in Canada. These 1293 companies had an interest in some 7809 properties in Canada and in over 100 countries around the world." (http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/ds/csr-strategy-rse-stategie.aspx)

However only 5 companies (0.0000000001% ......) in the mining are active participants of the Global Compact, the largest voluntary corporate social responsibility initiative, which includes more than 5000 companies worldwide. Of the 62 Canadian business participants from the United Nations Global Compact, 24 percent currently appear as delisted. Delisting is a sanction given by the Global Compact to companies that have failed to produce a Sustainability report for more than 2 years.

Canada also does not have a Global Compact Local Network, while most of the other OECD and BRIC countries have one. What is Canada doing?

In the mining sector, it is most expected companies are accountable of their human rights and environmental performance. The most material issues in the sector are community relations. human rights impact assessments, environmental management systems to name the big ones. Recently, Bill C-300, the Corporate Accountability of Mining, Oil and Gas Corporations in Developing Countries Act, proposed that Canadian extractive companies operating in developing countries adhere to environmental and human rights standards, like the Alien Tort Claim Act in the USA. Discussion are underway…. and big lobbies put such a pressure in a country where the mining sector is so important.

Now, the Social Responsible Investment perspective…. Most of those companies are publicly listed, which means that big pension funds invest in companies that often do not have their social license to operate! Also universities endowments invest in those companies, while some of their students study environmental issues, human rights law etc… Should all of them know and be enlightened citizen.

I hope Canadian companies are more accountable and this proposition becomes a law. That would make me prouder of Canada than I am now...

Further readings:
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15547
http://unglobalcompact.org/news/18-03-30-2010
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/article/782562--make-the-canadian-mining-industry-more-accountable
http://www.blackfireexploration.com/

Metallica Resources Inc. New Gold Inc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minera_San_Xavier

Gabriel Resources Ltd
(UN Global Compact participant)http://unglobalcompact.org/participant/4088-Gabriel-Resources-Ltd-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ro%C5%9Fia_Montan%C4%83


April 3, 2010 | 1:43 AM Comments  0 comments



International House, New York (www.ihouse-nyc.org) SCAM !!
Translations available in: French (original) | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | English | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

International House, New York (www.ihouse-nyc.org) SCAM!!
Automatically translated into English thanks to WorldLingo
Be careful International butt House in New York. I innocently applied for has housing in this place for 6 months, goal I did not know it was actually has SCAM.

I went through has very bureaucratic process. First I had to pay has NOT REFUNDABLE 65 USD fairy for the application. Then, there are admission criteria that I really think I was fulfilling, goal I then received has letter telling me I was denied the housing.

I then asked why I was denied the place, and after 3 phon cal attempts, the person told me that I did not fulfill the criteria in the same extent than other candidate, goal could not explain why exactly gold specifically.

She told me that it was like has university application!!!
I International amndt really upset against House, which basically steals international students gold Young people' S money!!!!

I you feel you were in the same box and this is actually has SCAM, please Write has me email At: sigar14@gmail.com.
The more we are the more powerful we will Be.

Cheers,

Simon

June 21, 2009 | 8:23 PM Comments  0 comments



Personal Diary
Translations available in: English (original) | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | English | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

I am on my way to New York, going there for a three months internship at the UN. I will use this blog to share my thoughts during my internship at the Global Compact Office.
I am now on the Greyhound bus still in Toronto.

After I worked in a corporate responsibility research firm in Toronto, I will now try to expand my knowledge in this area and learn more about all the stakeholders that are part of Corporate Social Responsibility. I think the UN is the best place to analyze such issues.
So far, my research mainly focused on the private sector perspective and how CSR can contribute to the value of a company. I am very interested about human rights issues, while this is a personal interest.
The bus is leaving see you soon.


... Well I realized the Greyhound bus had wifi! Great!

So yes I am writing this blog to organize my thoughts a bit and share my experience with those who dare read my poor English... whatever..

Before coming back to the goals of my internship I will briefly write about why I am going there and maybe why I was selected for the internship.

I have been passionate about global issues since my studies in history. In France, I studied history and political science. My program was B.A Multidisciplinary Social Science, History and Arts. I especially enjoyed a course on international relations and the history of socialism from Serge Wolikow. My passion led me to study International Relations at Laval University in Quebec, where I could further my knowledge by studying international economy, IR theory, environmental global governance.

I had the huge opportunity to work at TakingITGlobal on a project from IDRC, Microsoft and a Swiss development Agency whose aim was to develop IT infrastructure in developing countries. This was opportunity to see how a CSR project work, who the stakeholders are, and what make a project successful ... or not!

Then after completing some courses in business I had the huge opportunity to work in a Corporate Social Responsibility / Social Responsible Research Firm called Innovest Strategic Value Advisors. There I did a qualitative assessment of more than 600 publicly listed companies (listed on worldwide Stock Exchanges), to analyze the policies of multinationals (MNFs)and their relations to their actual (or what is publicly known) performance in term of environmental social (labor and human rights) and governance/anti-corruption norms. This led me to learn a range of issues I did not know before, and I gained expertize because I had to compile in my research all the reputational issues of MNFs in one database containing more than 2000 companies. I learned what the main issues are, but I only had the broad picture in relation to those issues.

I realized that the way company report their environmental performance is far from being the same for all companies. In accounting a company can hide a range of issues to increase the way their valuation is perceived by financial institutions or people who want to invest in those company.
But when social/environmental/governance (ESG) issues are in question, this is much worse!

There are some initiative that took place recently such as the Global Reporting Initiatives and other business initiative such as Responsible Care that compel companies to benchmark their reporting. This is great but not enough. I think government hold a responsibility to render those companies much more accountable. This is a first step to a cleaner, responsible and more transparent economic growth.
There is a great need to make accountability uniform and sufficiently transparent so that the financial markets take into account new metrics to valuate companies.

I also learned that corruption is still pandemic and companies policies in this area can be really weak (there are of course best practices). Also I was amazed to see companies that have a competitive advantage BECAUSE they are non-transparent (the worst are private equity firms). Most of those non transparent company are registered in fiscal heavens, do not pay taxes locally.

Some Banks also do not have thorough anti-money laundering mechanisms and specific policies.

When I talk about non transparent companies I am mainly referring to emerging market companies located in Brazil, Venezuela, China, India, Russia. Those are the worst in term or accountability. Not that all are doing bad, but their reporting is quasi non existent. So that at the end we never do what they do (good or bad).

I will post this blog as it is... that is to say very disorganized and come back later to talk about other issues I have in mind.

April 4, 2009 | 11:13 PM Comments  0 comments

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Right to Food cont'd - Facts and Figures
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

I took some notes from the last report for the UN, Building resilience: A human rights framework for world food and nutrition security, from Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Human Rights Council. Olivier De Schutter is absolutely wonderful and I am amazed at everything he is doing to advocate positive change for the right to food. The main idea of the document is that the current increase in food prices can be seized as an opportunity in order to advance the realization of the right to food by the adoption of structural measures, leading to a profound reform of the global food system.
Here is a random list of facts and figures I compiled:
- It has been estimated that with a 20 per cent increase in food prices in 2025 relative to the 1996 baseline, the number of undernourished people in the world would increase by 440 million
- It has been estimated that the production of food will have to increase by 50 per cent by 2030, and double by 2050, if an increase growth in demand is to be met
- Most of the food insecure live in rural areas. Agricultural workers are among the most vulnerable, owing due to the often informal character of their employment, depriving them of legal protection from their employers. They amount to 450 million, and represent 40 per cent of the world's agricultural work force.
- There are approximately 500 million small-holder households, totalling 1.5 billion people, living on two hectares of land or less. Many are facing an unprecedented increase in the price of inputs, as a result of the increase of the price of oil and, for livestock farmers, of crops, at the very same moment that, as net food buyers, they are spending larger amounts of their budgets on food.
- The surge in prices in 2006-2008 is the result of policies that have systematically undermined the agricultural sector in a number of developing countries over a period of 30 years
- Food crops currently used to produce ethanol are also the crops that form the largest part of the diets of poor people, maize, sugar cane, soy, cassava, palm oil and sorghum provide around 30 per cent of mean calorie consumption of people living in chronic hunger. There is a need for international guidelines on the production of agrofuels
- At both ends of the chain (producers and retailers) and in the middle (the food processing sector), the degree of concentration is particularly high: for instance, the 10 leading food retailers have a 24 per cent share of the $3.5 billion global market, and their activities in developing countries have expanded dramatically in recent years.
- “Cargill, the world’s biggest grain trader, achieved an 86 per cent increase in profits from commodity trading in the first quarter of this year. Bunge, another huge food trader, had a 77 per cent increase in profits during the last quarter of last year. ADM, the second largest grain trader in the world, registered a 67 per cent increase in profits in 2007. Nor are retail giants taking the strain: profits at Tesco, the UK supermarket giant, rose by a record 11.8 per cent last year. Other major retailers, such as France’s Carrefour and Wal-Mart of the US, say that food sales are the main sector sustaining their profit increases” (GRAIN report, Making a killing from hunger, April 2008, available from: www.grain.org/articles/?id=39)
- In 2007, approximately 23 per cent of coarse grain production in the U.S. was used to produce ethanol, for a share of ethanol in the gasoline transport fuel market of 4.5 per cent in 2008; in the EU, although 47 per cent of vegetable oil production was used in the production of biodiesel, causing higher imports of vegetable oil to meet domestic consumption needs, the biodiesel share of the diesel transport fuel market was 3.0 per cent.

November 7, 2008 | 8:29 PM Comments  0 comments



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