Tag Archives: CSR

Latest Developments, August 9

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In the latest news and analysis…

While London’s riots may not really seem like Beyond Aid material, commentators such as Laurie Penny have highlighted common ground through their accounts of how difficult it is for a society to provide thoughtful analysis of its own culture’s uglier aspects: “The violence on the streets is being dismissed as “pure criminality”, as the work of a “violent minority”, as “opportunism”. This is madly insufficient. It is no way to talk about viral civil unrest.” Similarly, Daniel Hind writes in an Al Jazeera piece it is a mistake to view the riots as apolitical: “We should perhaps ask [the young rioters] what they were thinking before reaching for phrases like “mindless violence“. We might actually learn something.” In the meantime, while stressing he does not wish to “draw a straight line from the decision to bail out the banks to what’s going on now in London,” he provides an assessment of his own: “Those who want to see law and order restored must turn their attention to a menace that no amount of riot police will disperse; a social and political order that rewards vandalism and the looting of public property, so long as the perpetrators are sufficiently rich and powerful.”

Oxfam’s Duncan Green makes no mention of the riots on his blog but does suggest a distance between government priorities and those of the public with his comments on the UK Office of National Statistics’ recently published report “Measuring What Matters”: “Topline results from a big public consultation is that ‘what matters’ are health; good connections with friends and family; present and future conditions of the environment and education and training. Not much of that reflected in our leaders’ fixation on GDP.”

Libyan officials have accused NATO of the “massacre” of 85 civilians. NATO denies the charge, saying there is no such evidence and the overnight air strikes were “legitimate.” The EU has added to its existing sanctions against Libya by targeting two organizations it claims are “directly linked” to the Gadhafi regime. And the US is reportedly preparing to impose new sanctions against Syria and to tell President Bashar Assad he must go.

Self-described social entrepreneur Dermot Egan argues in the Guradian that reactionary corporate social responsibility must give way to social enterprise, which requires that a company to embrace “positive social impact” as its central purpose: “Companies cannot continue to pretend to serve society while simultaneously acting against it. Neither can they continue to give shareholder’s interest primacy above the interests of the public. No amount of investment in charitable causes or employee volunteering can change that fact. The purpose of a company will be to create shared value, where business and society achieve success together.” In the meantime, Wyoming state legislators are considering adopting new measures to combat corporate fraud, including banning the practice of appointing nominee directors which companies can use “to hide the company’s real corporate officers and to help the operators avoid responsibility for the company’s actions,” according to the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. And activists in India are outraged the organizers of the London 2012 Olympic Games have accepted Dow Chemical – the parent of Union Carbide whose pesticide plant was the source of a gas leak that killed thousands in Bhopal, India in 1984 – as a sponsor.

In a statement marking the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said large numbers of the world’s indigenous people have lost or risk losing “their ancestral lands, territories and natural resources because of unfair and unjust exploitation for the sake of ‘development.’ On this day, let us ask the crucial question: who actually benefits from this so-called development, and at what cost is such development taking place?” She also called on multinational corporations involved in resource exploitation on indigenous lands to respect human rights, before concluding: “The right to development is a human right for all, and indigenous peoples have the right to define and determine their own development.”  Two of the countries Pillay singled out for their problematic handling of relations between extraction companies and indigenous populations were Canada and Brazil. During the current visit by Canada’s prime minister to Brazil, the two nations set up a committee to deepen bilateral trade,  co-chaired by the CEOs of Brazilian miner Vale and Canada’s Scotiabank which last year helped set up “the largest arms length oil and gas deal in Brazilian history.”

A new Economist Intelligence Unit report predicts the African banking industry will grow 178-248 percent by 2020 “due to huge unmet financial needs in a world largely marked by excessive debt and leverage.” On the subject of excessive debt, Jonathan Glennie argues a debt default by a wealthy European nation could be a good thing for poor countries if , as a result, it became easier for them to repudiate their own dates. He believes it is “morally bankrupt to force poor countries to pay debts while their people suffer in extreme poverty, especially if much of the debt is illegal or otherwise illegitimate.” He does not dispute that default is a difficult and painful process, but wonders if repaying massive debts and the attendant interest might not be worse over the long run. As things stand, creditors dictate repayment conditions. But Glennie would like to see debtor nations have recourse to an independent panel that “would try to ensure that the debtor emerges from the proceedings with good prospects for financial and economic stability. And lenders will know that they can no longer get away with odious or careless lending.”

Latest Developments, July 26

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A UN mission has observed food and fuel shortages and a “strained medical system” in Gadhafi-held parts of Libya. “Although the mission observed aspects of normalcy in Tripoli, members identified pockets of vulnerability where people need urgent humanitarian assistance,” humanitarian coordinator Laurence Hart said. Despite NATO’s military intervention, the amount of territory controlled by the Gadhafi regime has grown by about 20 percent over the last five months.

Twelve Democratic members of the US Senate have joined their Republican colleagues in opposing the proposed Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) on the basis of a perceived threat to the Second Amendment right to bear arms. “Ratification requires two-thirds of the Senate. So far 57 senators have said they would vote against the treaty, expected to be wrapped up next year,” according to a US News and World Report piece, which also quotes a Republican letter of opposition: “Our firearm freedoms are not negotiable.” The ATT, as currently being negotiated, would apply only to the international transfer of arms.

The UN Conference on Trade and Development has released its World Investment Report for 2011. The top story suggests a world moving towards greater equality, at least among states: “For the first time, developing and transition economies together attracted more than half of global FDI flows.” On the other hand, foreign direct investment is declining in some of the poorest regions, most notably in Africa which saw a nine percent drop in 2010. The report also addresses the current state of corporate social responsibility: “Voluntary CSR standards can complement government regulatory efforts; however, where they are promoted as a substitute for labour, social and environmental protection legislation, or where CSR standards are not based on national or international rules, then these voluntary standards can potentially undermine, substitute or distract from governmental regulatory efforts.”

Speaking in Hong Kong, US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton pushed for “true regional integration” in the Asia-Pacific as opposed to a “hodgepodge of inconsistent and partial bilateral agreements,” the pending US-South Korea trade deal notwithstanding. According to Stewart Patrick of the Council on Foreign Relations, Clinton’s message was consistent with American policy since the end of WWII but: “What is novel in Clinton’s approach is her insistence that developing countries—which have often been granted special treatment—can no longer be exempted from binding rules.”

The UN’s special envoy for the Middle East has told the Security Council: “The Palestinian Authority is ready to assume the responsibilities of statehood at any point in the near future.” But the US, one of five permanent members with veto power, has said it will oppose any attempt by the Palestinians to obtain state recognition from the UN in September.

Following last week’s deadly anti-government protests in Malawi, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a US government agency, has put on hold a five-year $350 million deal signed with the East African country earlier this year. The US government agency says it will conduct a review before deciding how to proceed, but terminating the agreement is a possibility.

After trying for over a decade, the International Gay and Lesbian Association has gained the right to attend and speak at UN meetings. Support for the group’s consultative status came primarily from Europe and the Americas, as well as Japan, South Korea, India and Mongolia. Opposition came largely from African and Islamic countries, as well as Russia and China.

University of London economist Costas Lapavitsas looks at the lessons to be drawn from earlier debt crises in poor countries. He criticizes policies that protect lenders while pushing the burden of debt onto the public, suggesting a possible remedy whereby an “audit commission could examine public debt for its legality, legitimacy, odiousness and social sustainability, providing grounds for its cancellation.” He also calls for “international co-operation among borrowers” and says “engagement with multilateral organisations, principally the International Monetary Fund, is to be avoided.”

Foreign Policy columnist Charles “The Optimist” Kenny calls for the leaders of Somalia’s militant Islamist group, Al Shabab, to be charged by the International Criminal Court for “crimes against humanity by method of mass starvation.” But at least some of the blame should go to the “modern world system” that has undermined the centuries-old, sustainable pastoralism that is uniquely adapted to producing food in one of the harshest climates on earth, according to Helen de Jode who has edited a book on the topic.

Esther Dyson, CEO of EDventure Holdings, says there are two types of investors: “Venture capitalists want to fund the next Facebook, while philanthropists want to use Facebook to support good causes.” And although she does not expect or want the former to start behaving like the latter, she suggests “they could focus a little more on training new employees rather than poaching them from the competition at inflated salaries.”

Latest Developments, July 13

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South Sudan looks set to join the UN, as the Security Council has recommended the world’s newest country for membership. According to the UN charter, the primary requirement is to be a “peace-loving” state.

Human Rights Watch has released a new report on abuses committed by Libya’s rebel troops. “Whatever happens, they couldn’t be any worse than Col. Gadhafi,” Canadian foreign minister John Baird said while officially recognizing Libya’s National Transitional Council last month. Only time will tell.

The EU is trying to fix its own fish stocks. But what about Africa’s?

Insurance broker Marsh has launched a policy to cover corporate corruption investigations under US and UK anti-bribery laws.

The New York Times explores the tortuous route to US legislation regarding conflict minerals, as companies hold their breath in anticipation of tangible rules from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Tiffany & Company, the self-proclaimed “world’s premier jeweler,” reportedly thinks gold should not be subject to the legislation and mandatory disclosure on use of conflict minerals “would violate the First Amendment.”

Jonathan Glennie believes we should recognize the limits of corporate social responsibility and move toward global regulation. “The point is to change incentives, and voluntary measures don’t do that,” he writes in the Guardian. “Only legal sanction or consumer action is strong enough, and consumer action is too erratic to rely upon.”

There is more to cracking down on tax havens than simply recovering revenue, according to Richard Murphy who argues the fight is necessary for the functioning of modern capitalism. “Tax havens are important with regard to tax. But their pernicious impact is much more significant than that. Their use to create opacity, to undermine the effectiveness of regulation and to ensure that owners are unaccountable corrodes all faith in the market itself.”

When it comes to recent food crises, price volatility is not the main problem, according to a new Foreign Affairs article. High prices are the real danger. “Food price levels are at historic highs, but food price volatility, although high these past few years, is not out of line with historical experience and is generally lower than it was in the 1970s.” The authors argue that high prices hurt consumers, while high volatility hurts producers, and that there is a positive correlation between high prices and political unrest but a negative one between volatility and unrest. As a result, they believe world leaders should focus on lowering trade barriers, increasing yields and reducing waste rather than imposing export controls and giving subsidies.

Of course, not everyone agrees. Nick Cullather argues food prices are actually too low and leading to the ruin of farmers and the agricultural sector more generally. “The global economy includes the global countryside, and the return of prosperity will have to begin there,” he writes. Vandana Shiva, for her part, sees high-tech solutions as part of the problem. She decries the hunger and desperation among India’s food producers and attributes their difficulties to “the capital and chemical-intensive, high external input systems of food production introduced as the Green Revolution.”

A Wellcome Trust blog post asks if global health inequalities represent the biggest bioethical challenge of our time. The author provides a summary of a recent conference on the subject, during which a number of global health programs were deemed “highly unsuitable for developing countries, focussing on the introduction of new technologies or disease-specific programmes, rather than on strengthening local efforts to secure effective, high-quality, inclusive health systems.”

A new study out of the Netherlands suggests there is little truth to the common perception that immigrants take advantage of the welfare state in rich countries. Instead, they tend to return to their country of origin if they lose their job.