Biodiversity Across Sectors

"Review of the biodiversity requirements of standards and certification schemes: a snapshot of current practice" considers 36 environmental standards, sampled from eight business sectors and aims to provide an understanding of the treatment of biodiversity across sectors, highlight commonalities and differences, and help businesses and funding agencies to improve their internal processes.

EC: Proposed CSR Strategy

The European Commission has published a communication titled “A renewed EU strategy 2011-14 for Corporate Social Responsibility,” which proposes a new definition for CSR as “the responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on society”. In this connection, a CSR action agenda for the period covers eight areas, including: - leveraging EU policies in the fields of consumption, investment and public procurement to promote market rewards for responsible business conduct;
- improving company disclosure of social and environmental information; and
- better alignment with global approaches to CSR, such as the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, the UN Global Compact, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the ILO's Tri-partite Declaration of Principles on Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy, and the ISO 26000 Guidance Standard on Social Responsibility.

Reporting on Ecosystem Services

A new publication by UNEP and other partners titled “Approach for Reporting on Ecosystem Services: Incorporating Ecosystem Services into an Organization's Performance Disclosure” considers issues around ecosystem services, and how corporations interact with them, reap the benefits, and as a result need to monitor and protect them. Furthermore, it suggests indicators that organizations could use to assess and report their impacts on ecosystem services.

Rio+20 and Sustainability Reporting?

The Corporate Sustainability Reporting (CSR) Coalition has called on UN member States to develop and adopt a global policy framework at UNCSD (Rio+20) requiring listed and large private companies to integrate sustainability information throughout their annual reports and accounts, or explain why they are unable to do so. According to the Coalition, the international policy framework should adhere to the overriding, key principles of transparency and accountability.
CSR Wire News Release

UN/S-G: Business and UNCSD (Rio+20)

At the Board meeting of the UN Global Compact, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for more businesses around the world to accept the principles of the Global Compact and for corporate sustainability to feature prominently at UNCSD (Rio+20)

Statement of Secretary-General at Board Meeting
Message from Secretary-General for Board Lunch

Global Compact LEAD Launched

The UN Secretary-General and a group of chief executives launched this new platform created by the UN Global Compact to enhance environmental, social and governance performance to set a new benchmark for corporate sustainability, at the World Economic Forum.

The executives represent a group of 54 companies, all participants of the UN Global Compact, that have made an ambitious commitment to work towards implementation of the Blueprint for Corporate Sustainability Leadership, a comprehensive roadmap outlining roughly 50 concrete actions businesses can take to achieve greater sustainability. Global Compact LEAD will be deeply integrated into other UN Global Compact engagement opportunities, including the six global working groups as well as the Caring for Climate and CEO Water Mandate initiatives. Website