Established in late 2004 to understand and mitigate the negative impacts on apparel workers from the end of the quota system, the MFA Forum has become a leading example of a single industry focused multi-stakeholder initiative. Hundreds of participants from NGOs, voluntary standards groups, trade unions, businesses and multi-lateral institutions worked together to promote responsible competitiveness in key exporting countries in the face of new and fierce global competition.

“The MFA Forum has been able to facilitate a unique collaboration among critical stakeholders with a common interest – to reduce the potential negative impact to workers by the end of quota,” says Sasha Radovich, Senior Manager of the MFA Forum. “Much still needs to be undertaken to make responsible competitiveness a reality. But the Forum has done its significant part in building the relationships necessary to tackle some of the most intractable issues of this industry and to improve the capacities in-country that enable implementation bodies to deliver. This network and its ability to continue to work together is the enduring legacy of the Forum.”

Over the course of the final work period (July-December 2010), a number of significant activities will be undertaken at the country-level. Final work plans and resource allocations have been identified for the transition or wind-up of work programmes. To ensure the sustainability of its work, the MFA Forum is focusing on capacitating actors in-country and on identifying and managing the transition to implementation bodies it works with, such as the ILO-IFC Better Work program. The significant lessons and learning from this unique organisation will be shared in early 2011.

The Forum has been hosted by the non-profit organisation AccountAbility and supported financially by the British, Swedish and US development agencies, by corporate contributions and in-kind support. For more information, please contact Kate Ives, kate@accountability.org.

Quotes from participants:

Kindley Walsh Lawlor, Vice President, Social and Environmental Responsibility, Gap Inc.:

“Gap Inc. made financial and operational investments in the MFA Forum because we saw it as an effective way to work with others to address social challenges that needed industry-wide solution. By working with the Forum in various countries, including Bangladesh, Lesotho and parts of Central America, we observed that they strengthened relationships among brands, NGOs, trade unions, national governments and multilateral organizations. As the Forum comes to a close and our industry faces new challenges, we are confident that the relationships established through the Forum will continue to drive positive change for workers and their communities across the globe."

Jean-Paul Sajhau, Team Leader of the Manufacturing, Mining and Energy sectors in the International Labour Organisation (ILO): “The MFA Forum has facilitated a constructive exchange of views, at a sectoral level, between all the parties concerned. In some countries like Morocco, the MFA Forum has, in collaboration with the ILO, allowed partners to benefit from direct access and support from the foreign buyers to reinforce the sectoral social dialogue.”

Laura Carter, Policy Assistant to the General Secretary, from the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers’ Federation (ITGLWF): “The MFA Forum has furthered the notion that decent work is a key ingredient of competitiveness and that concerted action is needed from all sides to secure the future of the industry. For instance in Lesotho, where the garment sector is almost the sole source of manufacturing income, MFA Forum members have worked to improve working conditions and labour standards, to secure support for infrastructure development and to develop market openings.”

Lynda Yanz, Executive Director, Maquila Solidarity Network (MSN): “The MFA Forum has given labour rights NGOs like ourselves opportunities to speak directly with international brands, local manufacturers and governments about systemic problems in the global garment industry that are not being adequately addressed by company codes of conduct or government regulation. These include the impacts of irresponsible factory closures on workers and communities, sourcing decisions that are still based more on price than on decent labour practices, and barriers to freedom of association in many producer countries. The MFA Forum provided a space for many of these multi-stakeholder discussions to take place. Fortunately, they will continue beyond the life of the Forum.”

Abdellah Hassiane, President of the Moroccan Bi-partite Committee: “No one believed in the beginning that we would achieve what we have in Morocco. The Moroccan stakeholders now sit together at the same table, and speak about the sector’s competitiveness. They make plans on issues relating to social dialogue and social responsibility. The Moroccan Bi-partite Committee, established through the MFA Forum, is unique, and although the Forum closes in December, the Committee will remain strong.

“Companies now face new economic challenges, social pressures and environmental threats. There is a new normal — and it’s not business as usual.... Businesses typically experience three stages in the sustainability life cycle: committing to compliance, integrating sustainability into the business DNA and changing the game. The performance leaders of tomorrow will have to do all three successfully.”

Read the full article here

Read the full article here

Read the full article here

AccountAbility Council Member, Vernon Jennings said: “We are delighted to have an individual with Mr.Misser's industry knowledge and stature moving into this very important role. His deep experience in the professional services field and passion for corporate responsibility make him the ideal leader for our organization.”

Previously, Mr. Misser served as Global Managing Partner of the Sustainability Advisory Business at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Prior to that, he was Global Strategy Leader for PwC’s Assurance and Business Advisory Services -- the firm's accounting, risk management, and consulting operation. Mr. Misser brings more than twenty years of P&L management experience to his new role at AccountAbility. During his career, Mr. Misser has been a strategic business advisor to CEOs and senior executives at Fortune 500 companies and multi-lateral organizations (MLOs). Mr. Misser holds an M.S.degree in Management from the M.I.T./Sloan School of Management, an M.S. in Industrial Engineering from Lehigh University and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from M.S. University.

"It's a privilege to be leading AccountAbility. With its nearly two decades of experience in the CR field and an unmatched depth of expertise, it brings a unique value proposition to the market. By providing research, standards and advisory services, all from under one roof, we are uniquely positioned to help clients address broad ranging CR issues from strategy through implementation."

About the Company

AccountAbility is a global professional services firm providing strategic corporate responsibility advice, standards, and research to Fortune 500 companies, leading MLOs and NGOs. AccountAbility helps organizations identify and prioritize their critical environmental, social, and governance issues; develop a strategy and performance management frameworks to address these key CR challenges; and implement practical solutions that increase revenue, manage risk, and enhance brand and reputation.

AccountAbility’s offices are located in New York, London, Washington D.C, Beijing and Sao Paulo.

For Sunil A Misser's biography please click here 

Following the survey, AccountAbility drafted an initial set of FAQs for the AA1000 AccountAbility Principles Standard (AA1000APS) & Assurance Standard (AA1000AS) 2008. These FAQs are currently being reviewed by the AA1000 APS & AS Technical Committees. In addition to these FAQs, the survey has identified widespread support for the development of materials providing guidance on practical application as well as case studies that we will review at the 29 May 2010 Standards Board meeting.

A summary of the survey results is outlined in Appendix 1. Some of the highlights and issues to address include:

Highlights 63% of respondents thought that AA1000 helped organisations focus on material issues; and 57% used AA1000 standards during the current reporting cycle and 74% indicated that they would use the standards during the next reporting cycle (representing a projected 30% increase in uptake amongst respondents). Issues to address:  29% of respondents felt a key challenge for AA1000 was interpreting requirements.

For any queries contact Laura Brooks, Partner; tel: +44(0)20 7549 0400

AA1000 - Accountable Sustainability
Ethical Corporation (www.ethicalcorp.com)
Oliver Balch, Latin America Editor

In part 2 of Ethical Corporation's Guidelines Briefing, Oliver Balch introduces the AA1000 series of standards and the principles the standards are based on. The briefing touches on sustainability assurance, stakeholder enagagement and the standards' development. Alan Knight, Associate Senior Partner at AccountAbility is also featured in this article.

Read the full article here.

• Learn more about AccountAbility's Series of Standards.

AccountAbility's latest Fortune China cover story hit the newsstands in March. This is the fourth year of our partnership with Fortune China in designing the cutting-edge CSR survey of managers and thought-leaders in China. This year AccountAbility has focused on how consumers are driving the sustainability agenda in China. 83% of respondents in the 2010 survey cited consumers as an important driver of CSR - the most highly rated driver for the third year running.

With Chinese consumer spending on the rise and more and more consumers in China and around the world demanding socially and environmentally friendly products and services, 2010 is poised to be a year where companies meet consumers’ green product demands, and make money doing so.

Read this year's article - 'The Dawn of Consumer-Driven CSR in China' in English. You may also read it in simplified chinese on the Fortune China website here.

Useful resources

• AccountAbility/Fortune China 2009 cover story: 'China's Corporate Social Responsibility Change Makers'
• AccountAbility/Fortune China 2008 cover story: 'China's Responsibility Standards'
• Learn about our consumer assurance work, rooted in the AA1000 Series of standards

Oliver Balch, Latin America Editor
31 March 2010

Ethical Branding Briefing Part 3: Consumers - Ethics goes bananas

In the last of a 3-part series, Oliver Balch explores current and past ethical consumption trends including consumer engagement, product labelling and the 'certification movement' i.e. Fairtrade. The UK retailer, Marks and Spencer is used as a case study to show how it empowers consumers to make a change and also touches on the retailer's ambitious 'Plan A' strategy.

Kate Ives, Senior Principal at AccountAbility and author of the latest report in the What Assures? series - What Assures Consumers in an Economic Downturn? is quoted in the article. She says: "It shouldn't be necessary for consumers to look at every single label on every single jam jar that they buy. It should be enough to see the brand and be comfortable that they know what the brand does and what it stands for." 

Read the article and the rest of the briefing series online here.

• Some of the key findings from AccountAbility's latest What Assures Consumers report is that consumers look to independent channels of information about business performance such as consumer watchdogs, the media, & third party assurance lables rather than information produced by businesses which implies zero tolerance on overstated claims and greenwash.
• Our 2009 What Assures? research also found that 30% of consumers feel they can influence the way a business behaves through their purchasing decisions, and 45% are still prepared to boycott products made by companies they do not trust.
• Learn about AccountAbility's consumer assurance work

Mark explains how stakeholder engagement can build corporate accountability and ways companies can generate reports which are meaningful and trusted by readers and stakeholders. He touches on AccountAbility's AA1000 Assurance Standard and also explains the 3 principles which underpin AccountAbility's AA1000 standards.

Additional resources:

• Learn about AccountAbility's AA1000 Standards, or join the AA1000 Standards group on LinkedIn.

'Painting the Landscape: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Public-Government Decsion-Making' is the latest research report commissioned by the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2). The global investigative report, which is currrently being finalised is supported by The Kettering Foundation and uncovers approaches and knowledge of public participation around the world.

Download the Executive Summary of the report and learn more about the findings here.

• The International Journal of Public Participation (IJP2) is an on-line, multi-disciplinary forum for the exchange of information among researchers, practitioners, decision-makers, and citizens about public participation and its impact around the world. It has been created with the specific intention of bridging the arenas of research and practise within the field of public participation. Learn more here: http://www.iap2.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=177

Alex MacGillivray, Senior Partner at AccountAbility was on the panel of judges for the 5th annual All-Parliamentary Rugby Citizenship Awards.

Bristol Rugby were crowned the winners of the Community Initiative of the Year 2010. The panel of judges unanimously crowned their Phoenix Project: Bright Sparks Programme as the winner. 

'Bright Sparks' is a social inclusion programme that utilises the highest quality rugby union skills, drills and games with team building and leadership workshops. The aim is to attain rapport with and re-engage designated young people from schools in high risk areas back into the educational process. Learn more here.

The panel of judges included Derek Wyatt MP, Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group, Robert Walter MP, Treasurer of the All Party Parliamentary Group, Mark McCafferty, Chief Executive of Premier Rugby, Kevin Roberts, Editorial Director of SportBusiness Magazine and Alex MacGillivray, Senior Partner at AccountAbility.

For more information visit: http://www.guinnesspremiership.com/news/13195.php 

An article written by Caryle Murphy published by The National, an english newspaper launched by the Abu Dhabi Media Company, looks at the success of the Global Competitiveness Forum recently held in Riyadh in January, which attracted numerous business leaders, most of whom are not involved in the oil industry. Caryle Murphy writes that the Forum proves Saudi Arabia's on-going 'determination to diversify its oil dependent economy, not only by bringing in foreign expertise and capital, but also by creating Saudi companies that can be successful players in the competitive global market.' 

According to AccountAbility Senior Partner, Alex MacGillivray, one reason for the increased interest is a more outward-looking business community. Quoted in the article, Alex MacGillivray says: “A lot of family-held [Saudi] companies are beginning to look to scale up and get more ambitious,” he says. “To do that, they have to have a stronger brand and part of that is to be a responsible player.”

The former UK prime minister Tony Blair was among the prominent personalities addressing the three-day conference. Others included: Michael Dell, the founder of Dell; Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric; James Wolfensohn, the former World Bank president.

Read the full article here.

Alex MacGillivray, Senior Partner and Paul Begley, Senior Principal at AccountAbility attended the forum to launch the Saudi Responsible Competitiveness Index 2010, an initiative of the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA), the King Khalid Foundation (KKF) and AccountAbility. The Saudi Responsible Competitiveness Index is the Arab world's premier responsible business initiative. Learn more about the 2010 Index here: www.rci.org.sa.

I’m still en route home from the workshop on Inclusive Partnerships for Agriculture for Development. My head is still spinning from the two days. Adequately summing up the depth, passion, insights, complexities and paradoxes raised by the participants will take some doing. But it will be a joy. Here’s one brief observation to start.

The most powerful and passionate discussion rests along the view of what partnerships should achieve. In my own interpretation, some see partnerships as a tool to level agricultural investment and planning – putting more decision-making power in the hands of farmers, local NGOs, communities, and National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS). The assumption is that this would change the priority of investments away from new discoveries, to partnerships that seek to fully achieve innovations for development. This means putting equal weight on efforts to adopt new discoveries with efforts to ensure new discoveries connect with or even create market opportunities. This in turn means puting the power of farmer voice at the core of driving research.

This in my view caused a mix of excitement and cohesion among many in the group, while causing some discomfort among others. A collection of voices made the point that research focused on delivering new discoveries is vital. It is not easy, and partnerships should increase the probability that new discoveries will emerge. There was no dispute that innovation for development is valuable. Participants tentatively debated whether agricultural research systems should focus primarily on (what I’m calling) discovery-based partnerships vs. (again, my term, for better or worse), innovation for development partnerships. We didn’t reach consensus on this. But I’d say that the conversation helped create a lot of clarity and build new bridges of understanding among the diverse voices in the room.

There are pages, and pages, more to share. The next step for us is to distill the most salient points and implications into a readable summary. A challenge, but keep watching this space.

-- Steve Rochlin, AccountAbility

Learn more about the workshop hosted by the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) and the Institutional Learning and Change Initiative (ILAC), and facilitated by AccountAbility here: http://www.cgiar-ilac.org/workshop/wip 

AccountAbility is pleased to announce that as of Monday 18^th January 2010, Laura Brooks will be joining the team as our Standards Partner based in the London office.

Laura is a Corporate Responsibility expert with extensive experience working with global and diversified businesses across Europe, Africa and Asia to integrate CR into core business processes. Most recently, Laura worked for Corporate Integrity UK and prior to that, KPMG Global Sustainability Services, gaining over 15 years experience in consulting, industry and NGO sectors.

In addition to her professional experience, Laura completed her PhD on inclusive governance and multi-sector partnerships at the London School of Economics in 2004.

Laura’s focus at AccountAbility will be on Standards governance, working with the AA1000 Assurance Standard and related work including guidance, licensing and outreach. She will also be working on the AA1000 AccountAbility Principals Standard and outreach with a view of developing practical guidance relating to this piece.

Laura will be working closely with Alan Knight and Christina Enotiades of the standards team.

To contact Laura, please email laura@accountability21.net or telephone on +44 (0) 20 7549 0400

AccountAbility, the German Development Agency (GTZ) and the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs (IICA) will be conducting a one year engagement process to empower government, business and civil society stakeholders to progress the responsible competitiveness agenda in India.

The project will focus on one sector of importance to India's growth and sustainability futures, and a theme of importance to the sector.

Through engagement via workshops and interviews, micro-, small and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs), as primary beneficiaries of the project, will identify challenges for their sector and develop actionable recommendations for themselves and other stakeholders including business associations.

Competitiveness and sustainability experts will be brought together; high level industry and thought leaders will contribute essays on the topic of responsible competitiveness, the sector's performance, and key development challenges facing India. The outcomes of the engagement will be published in a report that will be presented at a well profiled event in late 2010.

For further information or any queries please contact Kate Ives or visit www.responsiblecompetitiveness.org to learn more about AccountAbility's Responsible Competitiveness work.

After seven years of distinguished service, Simon Zadek will be leaving his role as Managing Partner at AccountAbility. On behalf of the staff and fellow Directors at AccountAbility, we are hugely appreciative of the contributions Simon has made to AccountAbility as well as to the field overall. We wish him well in his future endeavours.

Claire Head, Alex MacGillivray, and Steve Rochlin continue to serve as the Senior Leadership Team at AccountAbility. Alex MacGillivray will serve as acting Managing Director. Under this leadership, the team of AccountAbility will remain committed to the highest standards of quality, integrity and impact, and to supporting our members, clients, partners, staff and broader networks.

Every effort is being made to ensure that this transition in leadership runs as smoothly as possible. The AccountAbility team is determined that the transition will ensure AccountAbility’s ongoing success and the strength of its world-leading research, standards, and advisory services.

Download the letter from the Senior Partners and Directors at AccountAbility: Alex MacGillivray, Steve Rochlin, and Claire Head.

Hitting the targets, raising the money, counting the carbon: accountability is the key to a deal in 2010. Copenhagen is not all about delayed planes, surprise appearances and procedural farce. There have been some important concessions in the countdown to the end of the summit. First, Hilary Clinton gave US backing to the emerging commitment to raise $100bn a year by 2020 to

support those most impacted by the serious disruption that will come from a 2 degree change in temperatures.

The Meles plan
17 December 2009

10 billion here, 10 billion there. Pretty soon you're talking real climate money. Yesterday I blogged about 'MRV' (monitoring, reporting, verification). This started as a nerdy issue and has rapidly become a geopolitical hot potato. UK minister Ed Miliband yesterday evening confirmed that transparency is one of three key sticking points in the negotations which were due to run late into the snowy Copenhagen night.

The second big issue is the money. One fanciful notion circulating a few days back was for rich nations to allocate 5% of their GDP to support poorer nations: this would add up to several trillion dollars. Over the last 24 hours, senior negotiators have been carefully assessing the 'Meles Plan', a set of much more modest compromises on financing for developing countries put forward by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, standing alongside President Sarkozy earlier this week in Paris.

---

Monitoring emissions: technology leading politics
16 December 2009

AFP	There is an upbeat mood here in the Copenhagen sleet. There is a real buzz as 120 heads of state begin to arrive. But negotiators have left it to their bosses to solve in 48 hours a number of serious headaches.

One of the controversies is "MRV" - who should undertake monitoring, reporting and verification of carbon emissions country by country to see if they are meeting targets.

Current emissions data is always years out of date - and often of questionable reliability. How do hundreds of national datasets add up to the global overview? How will progress on reducing emissions be independently assured? Not by allowing third party verifiers to give legal pretexts for border tariffs, insist the Chinese. Should emissions inventories be maintained by the UNFCC, the IEA, the EIA, or by some other acronym agency? Who will help build national capabilities in monitoring low carbon strategies?

MRV is a highly charged climate acountability debate.

On the fringes of the negotiations last night, outside the crush of the Bella Centre, was the launch of a fascinating accountability innovation: the Planetary Skin Institute. It may sound like a Brazilian cosmetic surgery clinic but it's actually an ambitious new mult--stakeholder initiative between public, private, NGO and academic partners. Building on preparatory work between NASA and Cisco, the mission is to "sense, predict, act".

Planetary Skin is intended to become a vast, open-source IT network providing near-real time environmental data in a trusted and timely fashion. Its just the sort of thing that could have cut through some of the stalemates on the MRV issue over the past week in Copenhagen. MRV is no longer a political hot potato but a technological blueprint.

Will Planetary Skin's governance systems prove robust enough to assure stakeholders who will inevitably be suspicious? Will its non-profit business model outwit private sector competitors like google, who are active in the remote3 sensing space. Time will tell, but Planetary Skin is surely a welcome addition to the range of climate accountability innovations emerging outside the formulaic plenary sessions here in Copenhagen.

Fouling up climate world cup
14 December 2009

Getty Images

Apart from the football world cup, there's nothing like spending a couple of weeks in friendly competition with climate colleagues from around the world. In the crazy crush of Copenhagen, with nearly 50,000 people in town for the climate negotiations, and hundreds of side events to pick and choose from, its fun - but tough - to qualify.   That's why I was intrigued to try out an exciting experiment from the Climate Secretariat to see who could get a place in the stadium for the final week. What an own-goal.

This morning, at 7am, thousands of particpants assembled with me to test a completely new participative process called the Ad Hoc Standing Group (AHSG). The UN has been stung by criticism that its climate summits are 20th century and fail to bring out creative solutions.

So the AHSG was something new: a play-off where teams were playing the sub-zero weather not the clock. If we kept warm and hung together, while other people got cold and went home, we might finally win an official UN registration as NGO observers and pass through the heavy policing to the Bella Centre, where other warmer participants were sitting through plenary debates, sipping coffee and nodding off in side meetings.

• Simon Zadek addresses the sustainable finance community

14 November 2009
Guardian.co.uk

AccountAbility China Representative, Joshua Wickerham, has commented on how he thinks President Obama should make the most out of his recent trip to China. In the Guardian online post, Joshua writes that in order to jump-start the green economy, Obama should encourage co-operation between US and Chinese businesses.

Read 'A green call to arms'.

The Saudi Responsible Competitiveness Index, an initiative of the King Khalid Foundation, the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA), and AccountAbility, analyses how Saudi companies are building competitive advantage by managing their social and environmental impacts.

The three strongest performers on the Saudi Responsible Competitiveness Index - those companies that have made the most progress at aligning core operations to environmental and social development - will win a prestigious King Khalid Responsible Competitiveness Award. Awards will be made at an exclusive event at the Global Competitiveness Forum (GCF) on 24th January 2010.

Businesses of all sizes in the Kingdom are welcome to participate in the Saudi Responsible Competitiveness Index. To be shortlisted, firms need to obtain, complete and return the analytical questionnaire by 7th December 2009.

Companies wishing to participate should register their interest with the project team by contacting Paul Begley.

Read coverage of the Saudi Responsible Competitiveness Index launch on 16 Novemeber 2009 in the Riyadh Newspaper; Al Watan; and Okaz.

• Download the first Saudi Responsible Competitiveness Index report
• Read the press release from last year's Saudi Responsible Competitiveness Index, launched at the GCF in January 2009.

'A village in Nigeria..had agreed to let an oil company access their land and resources in exchange for clean water and school buildings. After a few years of letting the oil company get what they wanted, it became apparent..that the company was not going to fulfil its end of the bargain. Then years ago, these villages would have had no recourse. But these days, they have their own website and the leverage that goes with it ...Before long they had a campaign going to bring people's attention to the oil company's failure to deliver on its promises. A few months later, the oil company began showing up to the village, taking more interest in their needs, and began delivering on some of their promises (Blip Networks, 2007b). P37'

Continue reading the post by Steve Rochlin on ResponsibleBiz.net - a blog created by AccountAbility and Redmonk exploring how social media revolutionises responsible business practices.

Further resources:

• Steve Rochlin and James Farrar's article for the FT: 'Can web 2.0 revolutionise corporate responsibility?'
• James Governor's article on 'Sustainability and the Responsible Enterprise...2.0'
• responsiblebiz.net

The second annual national AccountAbility Rating, Portugal has been published by Sair Da Casca, with support from Two Tomorrows. This year's rating demonstrates considerable improvement from last years inaugural rating, with the vast majority of companies improving their overall level of accountability and overall average rating. The most significant sector improvements were within Electricity, Water and Light, which had the highest score thanks to the improved performance of EDP - Energias de Portugal -who was ranked as the most accountable company in this year's rating.

The Banking and insurance sector improved considerably (46%) from last year due to increased commitment to sustainability issues, increased disclosure of information and a more structured approach to stakeholder engagement.

To read the full report visit www.sairdacasca.com

The report 'Sustainable Value' produced from the 2 year EABIS funded study addresses how the environmental, social and governance performance of companies impacts their long term business success and how companies overcome the obstacles that often appears to stop the investment community from taking environmental, social and governance performance into account in assessing long term sustainable value creation.

The report proposes a "Value Creation Framework" - to show how improved environmental social and governance performance can impact the drivers of financial performance. The Value Creation Framework challenges the existing dominant norm of shareholder value; and of how value is created or destroyed. In the context of growing sustainability pressures worldwide, the objective of the framework is to help business embedding Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability and support the investment community in refining business valuation models.

According to the report, this new approach will have to overcome obstacles - limited data, lack of understanding, shifting terminologies and few incentives to change - in business and in the investment community.

The research group, therefore, proposes a number of concrete recommendations and initiatives to help change behaviours and mindsets in these communities. The objective is to implement the Value Creation Framework and create a critical mass of companies and investors using the framework.

Download the full report here or visit the project website to learn more about:

• The research papers supporting the final report
• Proposals to overcome barriers in mainstream and communicating non-financial performance
• Recommendations on how to improve communications around meaningful indicators of value created through non-financial performance

London. 26th October 2009 - Voting begins today for the third annual CR Reporting Awards (CRRRA '10), the only independent annual global awards for Corporate Responsibility (CR) reporting. The jury consists of an online CR community of 28,500. From now until Friday, 29th January 2010, registered users of CorporateRegister.com can vote here.

The CRRRA is managed by CorporateRegister.com, the CR resources website and provider of the worlds largest online directory of CR reports. The CRRRA identify and acknowledge the best CR reports and reward quality disclosure as a contribution to the raising of global reporting standards.

The CRRRA' 10 solicited reports published over the last year between October 2008 and October 2009. This year, 128 leading international reporting companies from over 40 sectors entered reports across nine categories:

• Best Overall Report
• Best First Time Report
• Best SME Report
• Best Integrated Report
• Best Carbon Disclosure
• Creativity in Communications
• Relevance & Materiality
• Openess & Honesty
• Credibility through Assurance 

Voting is open to all 28,500 registered users of CorporateRegister.com. This online community represents a global audience of higjly informed stakeholders and CR report readers: corporate CR professionals, CR consultants, CR organisations, government authorities, investorsm analysts, NGO's, charities, journalists, academics and students. Sign up for free here to allow participation in voting, unlimited website access and other additional benefits.

More information available here

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Download Simon Zadek's Panel Presentation

Itau-Unibanco and AccountAbility, in partnership with Project Catalyst and Institute Ethos brought together national and international climate change specialists for a dialogue on competitiveness opportunities and risks for Brazil and the business community.

Reflecting on recent cutting-edge research concerning climate change, the summit brought together those directly involved in the design of global scenarios and regional strategies to better understand the significance of climate change for Brazil in a national context.

The panel of specialists consists of Simon Zadek, Managing Partner at AccountAbility who presented trends and national strategies for a low carbon future. Also on the panel was Marcus Frank, Director of Climate Change at McKinsley Brazil who spoke about opportunities for Brazil in a low carbon economy; Marcelo Battisti, Director at Itau BBA who addressed how financial institutions see the emerging investment opportunities associated with a low carbon pathway; and Ricardo Young, President of Instituto Ethos, who discussed the importance of developing new business models and markets to ensure a new agenda to address the carbon challenge.

The summit examined Brazil's performance and potential as a low carbon competitor and the necessary action needed to drive business practice, public policy and civil action to allow climate change to positively impact national development.

Read more about the event in this article.

James Governor, co-founder of RedMonk a community-based analyst firm, has written about the 'Responsible Enterprise 2.0' on his software convergence and ecosystems blog.

Responsible Enterprise 2.0 is a new blog exploring how social media can revolutionise responsible business practices.

The blog is themed around a report produced by AccountAbility and SAP regarding social media and corporate social responsibility. The report was based on a research project enabled by SAP and AccountAbility, with RedMonk as key partner and Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) and International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) as supporting partners.

• To learn more visit responsiblebiz.net
• Read James Governor's article: 'Sustainability and the Responsible Enterprise....2.0!'
• AccountAbility's work on Web 2.0 and Corporate Accountability

This blog will be officially launched soon so watch this space.

AccountAbility is contributing to Project Catalyst - an initiative of the Climate Works Foundation involving over 150 senior government officials, climate negotiators, business executives and leading international experts. Project Catalyst was launched in May 2008 to provide analytical and policy support for the UNFCCC negotiations on a post-Kyoto international climate agreement and related stakeholders. Download the working paper.

'Low Carbon Growth Plans: Advancing Good Practice' is a working paper which reviews recent low-carbon growth plans put forward by countries to drive domestic mitigation and adaptation action and highlights the lessons learned from this experience. Visit the Project Catalyst resource center of national low-carbon growth plans.

The report reflects the current state of development in this rapidly evolving area and is published as a working draft for on-going discussion.  Comments on this paper should be sent to Maya Forstater.

• Alongside work on the Business of Adaptation with some of the world's most successful brands, AccountAbility is working with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to examine the progress towards a low-carbon in 70 countries. The Country Climate Competitiveness Index (CCCi) assesses how civil society, public policy and businesses are transitioning to support low carbon growth. For further information visit www.responsiblecompetitiveness.org

The UN focal point's August newsletter has published an article by Steve Rochlin, AccountAbility's Senior Partner and Sunette Steyn, AccountAbility's Senior Associate calling for UN agencies to publish their reports on partnerships onto the recently developed Collaborative Governance Observatory (CGO) platform, created by AccountAbility with the support of the Ford Foundation.

Read the full article here.

The CGO is an accountability hub for partnerships, designed to help partnerships deliver more effectively and efficiently on development objectives. The CGO will officially launch in September 2009 via a webinar. Learn more about the CGO. 

August 2009

After several months of research, analysis and multi-stakeholder input, the first draft of the AA1000 Stakeholder Engagement Standard (AA1000SES) has been uploaded onto the re-developed wiki platform, used for the successful revision of the AA1000AS, marking the first phase of public participation and review. Register on the wiki www.accountabilityaa1000wiki.net to participate!

Watch Alan Knight introduce the revision process and the improved wiki-platform

The AA1000SES orginally published as an exposure draft in 2005, was the first international stakeholder engagement standard published. The time is now right for a substantial review of the standard in order to capture and enhance current practice with the aim of making the revised standard relevant not only for the sustainability community but business, governments and other organisations. The use of a wiki platform will allow for international input, greater accessibility and increased transparency.

AccountAbility, with the support of the Ford Foundation, invites you to explore a new platform for partnerships. The Collaborative Governance Observatory (CGO) aims to empower civil society with the tools, capacity, knowledge, international networking opportunities, the shared experience and the public domain to live up to the task of improving the oversight of partnerships.

CGO also provides partnerships with the opportunity for increased transparency and credibility. It provides partnerships with the space to disclose partnership information such as contracts, revenue sharing agreements, targets and procurement processes to solicit input and comments from civil society. It is also a place where partnerships can voluntarily disseminate partnership policies, practices and tools to the public, civil society and beneficiaries.

Learn more about the aims and objectives of the CGO by reading Steve Rochlin and Sunette Steyn's article in the UN Business Focal Point newsletter. 

This article from Harvard Business Review's Editor, Arnand Raman looks at the recent debate over China's Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co. (Tengzhong) proposed acquisition of General Motor's Hummer Division and highlights China's changing approach to environment-related issues. The article also references AccountAbility's recently published paper 'Advancing Sustainable Competitiveness of China's Transnational Corporations' written by Simon Zadek, Managing Partner and Joshua Wickerham, China Representative of AccountAbility and Dr. Long Guoqiang, deputy director of the Development Research Center of China's State Council.

Read the full article here.

Industry response to the economic crisis that invests in the future

As the World Bank, the United Nations (UN), and other multi-lateral and bilateral donors work together to respond to the current economic crisis, the MFA Forum believes it can facilitate effective crisis responses within the apparel sector by leveraging its proven ability to mobilize an extensive stakeholder network and its extensive knowledge of the sector. As such, the MFA Forum recently launched the Sustainable Apparel and Footwear Initiative (SAFI) at an IFC-hosted meeting in Washington, D.C. in May 2009. SAFI is a coordinated set of initiatives designed to promote rapid responses to the urgent needs presented by the current economic crisis and to orient stakeholders around solutions that will drive long-term positive impacts and value for the industry.

Because the apparel and footwear sector is one of the single largest sources of manufacturing employment in developing countries, the effects of the global economic downturn are having a devastating affect on workers and communities in these countries.

The apparel and footwear sector is composed predominantly of young women, who are often internal (and sometimes external) migrants and working under precarious employment terms. According to the International Textile, Garment and Leatherworkers Federation (ITGLWF), approximately 11.5 million jobs have been lost in the sector already, with losses expected to increase by another 3 million over the next year unless swift action is taken to protect and promote employment in this critical sector. The disenfranchisement of millions from one of the few existing opportunities for unskilled women to enter the formal economy will reverse a decade of progress toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

There is an immediate and urgent need to design and implement interventions that keep as many of these women in the apparel sector employed and/or in a position to continue to provide critical resources for their family. In order to have an integrated and coordinated response, SAFI is focused on the following three work streams:

1. Promoting Responsible Trade Finance. The MFA Forum recognizes the opportunity to utilize financing incentives to raise the standards of this industry both through providing liquidity in the short term to ‘good’ suppliers in need of credit to keep their businesses open, but also for the longer-term by providing a program for preferential terms incentives for best-in-class practices in the industry.

2. Global Advocacy and Country execution of social protection programs. SAFI will mobilize its extensive networks for quick delivery and implementation of global information networks to provide immediate data and predictive mechanisms, influence best practices through Guidelines, and deliver on-the-ground support for the design and rapid mobilization of resources to deliver key programmes for crisis mitigation.

3. Shape the development of a new model of competitiveness of the apparel and footwear industry through supporting productive and responsible growth in developing market consumption. This activity includes promoting research and investments for the global supply chains of the future and committing to discussions to promote living wage.

For more information on SAFI or the MFA Forum, please contact: Sasha Radovich, Partner at AccountAbility. Email: sasha@accountability21.net Office: + 44 (0) 20 7549 0400.

09/06/2009 - LRQA's online mangagement systems community BusinessAssurance.com launched a 10-part audio and video podcast series, “Trust and Transparency.”

The series is a result of the launch event for the timely What Assures Consumers in an Economic Downturn report, commissioned by AccountAbility, sponsored by the Co-operative and supported by LRQA. The report addressed the issues of UK consumer trust, business responsibility and the effect the current global economic climate is having on consumer attitudes and actions and the subsequent implications for business strategies.

Harriet Lamb of The Fairtrade Foundation starts off the series with her insight on what it takes for organisations to rebuild consumer trust. She also talks about Fairtrade and how they have done during the current economic downturn. She also shares her thoughts on the What Assures Consumers in an Economic Downturn report. Visit www.businessassurance.com to listen to this first episode.

21 May 2009

The Financial Times published their annual list of the UK Best Workplaces 2009, which is also judged by the Great Place to Work Institute. AccountAbility sponsored the 'Corporate Responsibility Excellence' Award which was won by management Impact International this year due to their commitment of making corporate responsibility part of their mainstream operations through key initiatives such as policies for resource-efficiency, renewable energy, resource-efficient transport; a carbon-off-setting scheme in addition to HR involvement on a monthly basis to complete their CSR report.

Read the full article on the Great Place to Work® Institute's category excellence awards published as a special in the FT.

Licensing is now mandatory for all commercial uses of the AA1000 Assurance Standard (2008).

The licensing program covers all assurance services provided in accordance with the revised AA1000AS (2008) . It will enable continued investment in expanding and improving AA1000AS and supporting materials and will also be a first step on the road to improving global quality and consistency. Download the licensing agreement.

AA1000 licensed assurance providers will pay £500 for each commercial use of the standard (£200 if the organisation that you provide assurance for has an annual turnover of less than £2 million). Assurance statements published by licensed assurance providers that meet all the requirements in AA1000 Assurance Standard 2008 will be able to display the licensed assurance provider logo on assurance statements and promotional materials.

Licensing process :

• AccountAbility will send a licensing terms and conditions agreement to all assurance provider organisations;
• There will then be two processes, one for those that sign the agreement and one to those who have not yet signed the agreement.

  Download FAQ

If you are using the AA1000 assurance standard (2008) to provide assurance services and have not yet received a licensing agreement or if you know of others in the same circumstance and would like more information please contact christina@accountability21.net or call directly on 0207 549 0400.

Please note that use of the original AA1000 (2003) will continue to be free during 2009, however, use of AA1000 (2008) will be charged for during this year. AA1000 (2003) will be withdrawn at the end of December 2009 and from January 2010 all assurance engagements must use AA1000 (2008) and will therefore invoke a license fee.

CSR International: CSR is Dead...Long live CSR!
4 March, London

CSR International, a community interest company established in 2008 was launched officially on 4 March in London by social entrepreneur, writer and academic, Wayne Visser author of The A to Z of Corporate Social Responsibility book and originator of the concept of CSR 2.0

CSR International's members include corporate sustainability & responsibility (CSR) professionals, students and enthusiasts from business, government, academia and civil society, who are focused on transforming business into a positive agent for change in the economy, society and the environment. CSR International aims to promote a new, evolved concept of CSR – CSR 2.0 which  moves beyond CSR as public relations, philanthropy or incremental improvement to CSR as a transformative concept based on connectedness, scalability and responsiveness.

Read the press release CSR is Dead...Long Live CSR! or visit www.csrinternational.org

AccountAbility has been commissioned by the World Economic Forum to develop a framework for how corporate governance practice can be best advanced in the Arab world. This framework will be co-designed with the Arab Business Council and in consultation with the Global Agenda Council on Corporate Governance, as well as other interested parties regionally and internationally. The framework is intended to facilitate the adoption of this approach throughout business networks and institutions across the Arab business community.

Instituting a road map for advancing corporate governance in the Arab world is not without its complexities, especially when faced with a diverse range of countries and businesses with diverse levels of development and existing corporate governance mechanisms and ownership structures. In the wake of unprecedented global financial turbulence, the G20 unanimously conceded that the global economic crisis was chiefly caused by inherent weaknesses in the underwriting and risk management practices that often lagged behind fast-paced financial innovation. Yet, it was also acknowledged that the crisis was exacerbated by lack of transparency, poor corporate governance and the failure of shareholders to act to protect their investments.

At the backdrop of the stark lessons revealed, and in partnership with the Arab Business Council, we are presented with a watershed opportunity to take into account the shortfalls of classical international best practice and redefine global best practices. By taking stock of these lessons, we hope to forge an Arab specific framework that not only advances corporate governance in the region but also reshapes international norms by leapfrogging those corporate governance measures that have collapsed under the strain of the crisis. A framework for action has the potential to go beyond these norms whilst retaining the integrity of those that have stood up against the crisis.

The framework will be published by WEF as a Report, to be launched by the Arab Business Council and AccountAbility at the Jordan WEF meeting in May 2009.

For further information please contact Soraya Dean at AccountAbility on +44 (0)207 5490400 

Call for participation: Guidance for the use of AA1000AS 2008

AccountAbility's Standards Team are calling for input into the guidance document to support the application of AA1000AS (2008. This note was published as an exposure draft at the time of the global launch of AA1000APS (2008) and AA1000AS (2008) and provides further information for assurance providers, reporting organisations and users of assurance statements.

Have your say by emailing your comments and suggestions for improvement directly to Daniel Waistell, Standards Manager - no later than 30th March 2009.

The Guidance for AA1000AS (2008) is a new document developed as a direct result of stakeholder input during the consultation exercise. Many reporting organisations, assurance providers and other stakeholders asked for more guidance on what the various elements meant and how to deal with them in practice. This more informal guidance was not placed in the standard to provide extra flexibility. The guidance addresses the need for information beyond the minimum requirements. The guidance, unlike the requirements of the AA1000AS (2008) is non-binding.

Download.

 Flying from Sao Paulo to Belem do Para I can’t help but feel all the excitement I felt a long time ago, when I was flying to Porto Alegre, where the Forum actually began in 2001. The Forum’s participants used to be, and I think still are all about excitement and hope.

The plane makes a quick stop in Brazil’s capital, Brasilia, and men and women in suits and blackberries leave the plane in a rush for their next meetings. They are replaced by a Spanish-speaking crowd exhaling the same excitement as me.

I guess this is part of the hope that permeates people participating this year, that the complicated and main faceted issues of this unique region will be the focus – like water and women were in Kenya in 2007.

Amazon and its several tribes and dwellers will this time maybe...just maybe have a space and a voice. More than 100,000 people are expected, the majority from Latin America.

The minorities will be there, from indigenous to quilombolas. Sitting by my side in the plane is a journalist working for the federal government in the special secretary for the promotion of politics for racial equality. He starts by saying: ‘it is very difficult…’

His name is Rafael Rodrigues and he amazes me confirming that there has actually been some progress in this agenda. A law has been approved in 2005 to enforce that African and slaves’ history is properly taught at schools. Amazed? One year later, another law was passed to impose that indigenous history is also taught to children. The law is there, but its implementation… well, ‘it is very difficult’.

Brazil’s President Lula’s decision to attend this year the World Social Forum instead of the World Economic Forum is a sign that Latin America has its space. Later today, social movements will participate in the activity "Prospects for the Integration of Latin America People," along with Presidents Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Evo Morales (Bolivia), Rafael Correa (Ecuador) and Fernando Lugo (Paraguay). This paves the way for hope for the region and its inhabitants.As my plane approaches the airport, I ask myself one question, hoping I will be able to answer it on my flight back: can the World Social Forum really propose a different system to govern Amazonia, with real participation from all the countries, local people and businesses involved? Or is this a question that will soon be taken to the World Economic Forum, once the financial crisis is no longer the main focus point but climate change is?

And when I look outside my seat’s window, I can see Hugo Chavez’s official plane has just landed and he is coming down the stairs. My heart still hopes.

Thanks to Edna who is from the indigenous Marajoara tribe, I have a place to sleep and I was also put in a session to discuss what it is that is new to this Forum in relation to the indigenous cause.

She is the President of a non-profit association that fights for the rights of the Amazon people (indigenous and traditional communities) in Para. There are today about 600,000 indigenous people but more than 25 million traditional communities. And they are interested in climate change... for the first time.

This morning, the session was about the right of these communities to participate in the dialogues and negotiations about this issue in the Amazon region.

“They think this should be taken to Europe or the US so they can help us find clean energy alternatives, improved technology solutions and better ecological ways of growing and utilizing rivers and soil, but they don’t see that we have been using this region for a long time and we should be included, that the solution and innovation could come from here”.

Basically, in this first phase, they are fighting for education relating to the impacts caused by climate change in the Amazon region. They need to understand what this is all about so that they can participate. They don’t want to be part of a consultation phase only, but they want to go beyond.

‘Educating the local communities is essential for our understanding of our own impact’, she says.

Edna is right. There can’t be any discussion about climate change and impact if locals are kept involved only in the learning process phase for those that lead the discussions from far away. If key stakeholders need to be involved, education needs to happen fast and in a language they can understand and translate into their realities.

During one of the morning sessions, someone takes the mic and shouts: ‘The streets of the Forum are dirty, full of paper, plastic, food. How is this possible in a place where 120% of the people are supposed to be educated and engaged in creating a better and different world? I am not going to start a long and endless discussion about how to collectively and collaboratively try and come up with alternatives to overcome this situation. This should not even be a topic.”

Could this be a metaphor?

There is a different currency circulating in the Forum. Colourful notes with local animals drawings can be exchanged for real Brazilian money – Reais - in the Solidary Economy’s bank. You can exchange this for food, goods, local transport (someone in a bicycle who takes you to your next session for 3 monies), and all sorts of trade activity taking place.

This is a way of calling people’s attention for this type of economy, already happening in small communities, where other currencies circulate. The bank gives credit (after analysis from the community itself) to local producers in alternative money and they use it only in that community for any trade purpose. The money then is only accepted within the borders of that community, creating a sustainable society, that is able to produce and consume its local produced goods.

The tricky thing here is to make sure you spend all your alternative money in the Forum. This trade scheme finishes the day the gates close behind us on 01 Feb.

31 January
'What now?'

It is true that the current economic and political system was not killed by the World Social Forum’s activism. It committed suicide.

The world financial crisis is everywhere in the Forum, from side discussions to entire sessions to Lula’s decision not to attend the World Economic Forum principally not to cause possible damage to his image by associating himself to part of those responsible for this global situation.

Yesterday a session dedicated to public finances and the financial crisis discussed possible scenarios but the main point was that world citizens know how the Government is protecting the banks, they just don’t know how it is protecting the people.

The leader of Brazil’s landless workers, Pedro Stedile, during a session with the Latin American Presidents reinforced the need for structural changes and not cosmetic solutions to the current status quo. ‘A new paradigm is necessary, we need to build a system that allows for real articulation between the capital and the social movements’.

The Forum, through its different voices, is legitimizing stronger state intervention in the economy and applauding ideas of state control over banks and important economic sectors.
But the Forum, from its initial design, is not supposed to be a singular voice but an open space for all the movements and organizations. It is not supposed to generate any single document that speaks on behalf of its participants. It does not want to become a political tool.

But, Boaventura de Sousa Santos has, for this year, a different view: ‘I have always defended that the decision of being a neutral space is the correct one, but that it shouldn’t be executed in a dogmatic fashion. The historical moment we are currently going through is so crucial, that if the world can’t see a solid position from the World Social Forum about it, it becomes easy to foresee that the WSF has a serious risk of becoming irrelevant’.

WEF Day 1 - 'Sands into Snow'

My annual pilgrimage to the Magic Mountain is always a transcendent experience of departure and arrival...this year more than most, not only because of the extraordinary circumstances but because my point of departure was Riyadh. Saudi Arabia’s Global Competitiveness Forum precedes Davos each year, with chartered flights for dignitaries in motion from one to the other. The Kingdom’s headline topic for this year was, appropriately, ‘Responsible Competitiveness’. Thankfully, the back-slapping moments of last year’s Davos were completely absent, with still-in-post chief executives and political leaders providing some humbling thoughts on the disaster.

The out-of-time financial sector, with Mr Thain as its unintended posterchild, rightly provided a natural ‘fall guy’ for the event, with misaligned incentives combined with rampant greed providing the background narrative for all that is wrong in the world. Fair enough, certainly, but a strange sight to see some of the world’s most photogenic leaders offloading any sense of their own culpability. Nissan’s hugely successful chief executive, Mr Ghosh, forwent any mention of the failure of Nissan to invest ahead of the pain in low-carbon transport options. Similarly for Mr Enders, Airbus’s chief executive, who urged us to pray for renewable alternatives to jet fuel as if he and his company were out of the loop of aircraft design and production. As to the future, their prognosis is a deep recession with a ‘return to normality’ within five years...

But back to the Magic Mountain...this year’s topical theme is ‘Shaping the Post Crisis World’, but the mood forces the immediate into focus. Wen Jaibao has just finished his plenary contribution...impressive, with a clear message that its going to be okay, despite the serious economic numbers emerging from China...8% is his magic number, which is the annual rate of growth China needs to achieve to avoid serious social problems...rumour has it that China’s most recent quarter performance is well below that number...Mr Putin is next up, Time Magazine man of the year in 2007, and politician of choice in a side meeting at WEF in Tianjin late last year (see my oD article on this)...only problem is that although it is an open plenary, some folks seem to have little yellow tickets and no one else can get down the stairs...Mr Putin is inclined also to tell us its all going to be ok as long as there is a bit of give and take, by which I think he means he could give us energy security in return for allowing Russian companies to migrate downstream into European retail energy markets, that Russia is left to its own local and regional wandering inclinations, and that Russia be applauded for its autonomy and strength...

Was invited to a productive session on climate change this afternoon, with a lot of brain power in the room and knowledge of the intricacies of this tricky topic. Jeremy Oppenheim from McKinsey set out the stark carbon and economic numbers, reminding those who needed it that every year’s delay added another 3-5 parts per million of carbon dioxide, edging us towards the magic number of 450, beyond which Lovelock’s ‘revenge of gaia’ takes hold to our cost. As a long time fan of Achim Steiner, Executive Director of UNEP, he got my session prize in advancing proposals for a sliding levy on the price of oil as a way of raising the money to finance developing country moves towards low carbon trajectories. By one reckoning, a $10 a barrel levy (remember that in the last 12 months, prices have gone from $60 to $147 and now down to $30, so $10 is pretty trivial) would generate $180 billion a year, coincidentally what Project Catalyst, a climate initiative that AccountAbility is involved in, says is what is needed to cover the bill...

23.00, sipping piping hot tomato soup in the restaurant of Hotel Ochsen, a cute hotel that has become the hang-out joint for many of the 50 or so civil society and labour invitees...folks like Ken Roth from Human Rights Watch and Ricardo Young from Instituto Ethos make up a sort of undefined ‘international brigade’ at Davos, available to inform, guide and ultimately challenge the conventional wisdoms that always threaten to disable elites that become overly self-contained...Steward Wallis, the New Economics Foundation’s chief executive, sits twisting someone’s ear on the next table...outside of the window, wayward billionaires, ministers of state and spiritual leaders walk unsteadily along the slippery white pavements, avoiding the high-octane Audis cruising the village moving another level of participant from place to place on demand.

Davos is unbelievably full this year, despite or maybe because of the current crisis, I guess it could be some version of group therapy, or a way to reduce travel costs in getting through a lot of meetings...actually, the truth is that folks are in the room with a lot of head scratching, which is far better than the certainty of last year, which offered the spectacle of unchallenged statements from financial leaders and US political leaders along the lines of ‘problem, what problem’, and intellectual giants spelling out the irrefutable truth of ‘decoupling’...but never mind, one cannot always get it right.

...there is a distinct shift towards profiling political rather than business leaders, and a tonal change that leaves many sessions ringing with the words ‘let government action begin’, whether it concerns fiscal stimulus, bail outs, funding a new smart grid in pursuit of effective climate management or even previously unheard of calls for greater regulation in pursuit of stability, risk reduction and more generally ‘safe market making’.

The New York Times yesterday set out a small truth that is still not being faced here at Davos..."By almost any measure, 2008 was a complete disaster for Wall Street — except, that is, when the bonuses arrived”, and then sets out the terms on which almost US$20 billion dollars were doled out last year to the fabulous stewards of our global assets, our investor comrades...it is a curious fact that the NGO community has failed to date in grasping the true significance of the financial meltdown, and there are no signs at Davos of this unbroken and unenviable record being broken. One conversation with a leading human rights activist (HRA) yesterday went roughly as follows...

Me: Do you realise that the financial meltdown has huge development, environmental and rights-related implications.
HRA: Yes.
Me: There is a once in a life time opportunity to reshape the basis on which capital is invested in business, which could have a massive impact on their sustainability impacts.
HRA: Yes.
Me: It appears that civil society, whilst displaying outrage, is not engaged in the policy process of re-regulation of the financial community.
HRA: Yes.
Me: Don’t you think this is something that needs to be addressed, and in the short term since key decisions are being made as we speak.
HRA: Yes.
Me: So does that mean you could engage in this, now, since it is only in the coming weeks and maybe month or two that such interventions would count.
HRA: No.
Me: Oh (sound of quiet sobbing).

Posted by Simon Zadek at 1/29/2009 10:26 AM

WEF DAY 2: 'Upsetting the NGO Sector'

Actually the session title was ‘Sustaining the ngo sector’, a lunch session with 50 + NGO leaders discussing the impact of the downturn on the community...am amazing group of people of course, as the uplifting series of opening presentations amply demonstrated...discussion about mergers and acquisitions and currency management seemed quite normal to these folks, alongside the more familiar concerning calls for support to the community in helping – yes – the community.

It was Ingrid, the now-not-so-new Secretary General of Civicus (note that her predecessor, Kumi Naidoo, is on hunger strike in a large scale campaign for change in Zimbabwe (check out YouTube for more on this: www.youtube.com/user/civicusworldalliance), who landed the matter of the fabric of the NGO community itself, “in recent times, no fewer than 87 countries have passed or are advancing legislation that will to varying degrees muzzle civil society...in our understandable prioritisation of those directly impacted by the recession, let us not forget civil society itself”...

My take on the moment was offered minutes later in a somewhat different vein, “civil society has blossomed in recent decades, and now employs more and secures more money than every before, our growth rates have exceeded those of China...so do we feel proud of ourselves as we enter the greatest global recession in history, do we feel as we rightly point to the flaws of business and political leaders that we escape blame...surely our current circumstances suggest that we are culpable in having failed, fundamentally, in shaping society as it should be”...curiously, the session moderator stepped in before any answers were forthcoming, “lets now talk about culpability, but maybe responsibility”...well no, that is the point surely, I pondered (to myself), culpability is essential if someone or something can be held to account, responsibility is a means of avoiding such starkness.
We highlight this difference when we call out business misdemeanour, but seem unwilling to apply it to ourselves.

This could become an entirely unintended Davos theme, and I apologise in advance for any irritation it might cause.

'Making Prices Count'

Oil is cheap. New York’s main futures contract, light sweet crude for March delivery, traded at $41.63 a barrel today, while Brent North Sea crude for March fell 68 cents to $44.22. By almost any measure, it is just not enough. “We are not happy with $40 even $50 a barrel,” Abdalla Salem El-Badri, Opec Secretary-General, told a panel discussing energy security. And they are not alone.
Tony Hayward, the chief executive of BP, told the panel that Opec countries needed a price of about $60-$80 per barrel to balance their budgets and invest in social programmes. “A price somewhere between $60-$80 would be appropriate,” he said.

Cheap oil, you would think, translates through to reduced eco-innovation, much as a low price on carbon would...but things are apparently not that simple. Attending a session about how consumer retail companies were innovating in pursuit of sustainability, I asked what I thought was an innocuous question, “at what level do energy and carbon prices drive innovation?”...the answer, provided by two CEOs, was kind of a shock, “you don’t get it”, said the first, “sustainability is just part of the business, its not about energy prices”, and the second followed this up with the equally intriguing comment, “you might as well talk about rice prices, or the price of water, these are equally important”...well yes, but...hmmm.

Business leaders here, or at least some of them, seem to believe that the climate thing is beat...technology, innovation and business prowess is what it takes, and there is a lot of all three at play. Unfettered markets and Schumpeterian Umph has considerable cache, it seems, more than any talk of accountability...but to be fair, that is not quite true, one CEO in the same session declared, “we need to redefine our field of responsibility”, a view that received the nod-through assent of the assembled $500 billion a year worth of businesses...but in this world, responsibility is exercised through innovation, not any traditional view of accountability (I have a weird feeling I have written about this already today – have a look at the earlier blog on the NGO sector).

It has to be said that edible packaging, collaboration to fill empty trucks, value chain redesign to reduce energy use, and product reconfiguration to deliver the ‘experience not the stuff’ has indeed moved from the movies to the mainstream...there is no doubt that many businesses have got it at a gut level, “we cannot expect to continue to provide body cleaning products unless we can secure a sustainable supply of palm oil, and the Rainforest Alliance can ensure that our coffee is fair bought” are the kinds of remarks that would have caused celebration at the Body Shop less than a decade ago, and it is a true development that it is increasingly part of business as usual. And there is little doubt that most civil activists under-estimate by a massive factor the power of business innovation to deliver meaningful solutions.

But why must innovation and accountability be at such odds, a sort of West Coast – East Coast thing, social entrepreneur’s and mega-businesses alike cannot, it seems, be constrained by mere accountability where innovation and values provide a heady blend that will lead us our of our current quandries.

Over the peak and heading for end-station Sunday...there is a seriousness here, a focused concern that is strangely settling...despite the usual chaos of Davos’s unfounded hopes, dissassociations of responsibility, technological idealism and the occasional relapses into post-Friedmanite market mania...there is an inner reality that most folks here seem to share, that the exercise of globalisation has indeed gone wrong, that Business as Usual will deliver more of the same toxic results, and that tinkering with the system will not do the job.

The facts now go undisputed, a huge step forward in itself from previous eras of outright denial. No one in the room disputed the shocking data point that by 2020, 85% of the world’s population will live in water stressed areas unless something changes. As Nestle Chair, Peter Braebeck, made clear in his speech in Saudi Arabia and has reiterated every time he has had the chance here at Davos, “we will run out of water long before we run out of oil”. Businesses as much as labour organisations have embraced with horror the fact that in the last year, according to the ILO report timed to coincide with WEF, 50 million souls have been registered as having been made unemployed, excluding in the main China and the many millions who have slipped, or who have been booted, out of the labour market unnoticed by the statisticians...and with the US alone exorcising a cool 0.5 million a month, the numbers are unquestionably going to rip off the roof...

With such diverse players and interests around the table, there is common cause created and demonstrated here in merely accepting these and many similar numbers.

Lobbying and tactics and debate and argument come in discussing culpability and solutions... On the former, there are some curious perspectives at play, ”you cannot really blame alone the US for over-consumption, a massive consumer credit boom and living beyond its means”, explained one person patiently to me, “after all, we were just mopping up the inapprorpriate trade surpluses of Germany, Japan and China”...actually, such views would not matter if they didn’t, but they do because they inform the next act...in one discussion of the timing of the end of the recession (ranged from a few folks saying last quarter 2009, most folks saying late in 2010 and a few would-be suicide cases voting for 2012 and beyond), I argued, “it is not so much when it ends, but how we emerge from this mess, politicians will be desperately tempted to unlock the cage and let consumer credit roam the streets once again, so swamping any attempt to deliver a green fiscal stimulus”...nonsense, I was told, consumer demand in itself is not part of the problem, “it is the best form of democracy that we have”.

But that said...pretence is at a remarkably low ebb, certainly less than ever before...the main game, the parallel world of private sessions full of CEOs and ministers with a liberal scattering of NGOs, the tough questions are, one way or another, on the table...what does it take to cut a decent climate change deal, how to fix the financial system, ways of addressing the water crisis, means of preventing food speculation...this is the conversation in play, and it must be said outside of the glare and reward of public relations...as one CEO insisted in a tricky discussion about scope of accountability for water management in supply chains, “lets not posture, we have to get stuff done, now, in securing water for communities, or else none of us have much of a future”.

And the Davos crowd is in fact the team, if they were a team, like it or not, with the power to make decisions on our collective behalf, thrown up by hard work, heritage, luck and perhaps occasional misdemeanour into positions of power. They do have the power to make a difference, in fact they have a rare opportunity in this moment of crisis to rewrite the rule book...to actually change the course of history. And to top it all off, the Davos crowd is hugely intelligent, on the whole rather nice, and in the main, deeply moral.

...But here is a strange thing, because many of the sessions dealing with the right topic, an appropriate sense of urgency, and with theses folks in the room, seem to exude uncertainty complete with an eerie feeling that someone notable is missing...its a little hard to explain, but everyone seems to be talking to someone who isn’t there...sometimes this is quite concrete and specific...leaders of some of the world’s most powerful companies worrying that it is local authorities (absent of course) that hold the key to solving the world’s water problems...or with some of the world’s political leaders in the room discussing climate change, they look towards business in seeking permission or guidance in how best to move forward...and as for the NGOs, well, I have already made this point in earlier blogs...but mostly it is not so concrete, but a real, undisclosed collapse of confidence that the club has the right members, the right mandate or arrangements, to sort out the mess.

The problem of course, are the institutional bonds that hold extraordinary people in place...the most amazing business leader, in flight through a insight, is struck dumb through a need to reiterate, “of course we will only do this if makes money”, just as the charismatic and insightful politician lowers his or her sights with the words “...but the people I represent are not concerned with this”...it is as if some great bluff, a grand, well-intentioned hoax is required to save the planet and us all in it...climate change is predicted, if unabated, to wipe us all out, but to rise collectively into action, we have to posit or even guarantee a low carbon prosperity that allows for driving (electric), flying (biofuel), and meat eating (electric sheep ?)...now of course economic development counts, just as private property rights and the role of private capital needs to be protected and indeed nurtured...but it beggars belief that no one stands back and at least asks, ‘are we really making the right assumptions about how to organise our political economy and the role of its principal actors.

It is as if some Anglo-Saxon view of corporate governance and fiduciary responsibilities was a mandate from some greater being...I am a member of WEF’s Global Agenda Council on corporate governance, along with some fine folk such as the great investor activist, Bob Monks and the executive director of the International Corporate Governance Network, Anne Simpson. At our first jamboree in Dubai earlier this year (along with no fewer than 70 other Councils covering every conceivable topic), we debated trends in corporate governance. A true-blue argument flared up over the topic of public ownership. On the one side was, yes you guessed it, me, arguing that a revival of public ownership provided an opportunity to revolutionalise the manner in which the public interest could be exerted through ownership, a step wise change from the relatively limited and highly constrained ‘responsible investment’ movement. The dozen or so real experts around the table were, frankly, horrified, and argued strenuously that the world had to take steps to ensure that these public owners behaved like, yup, you guessed it again, ‘private, commercially-focused owners’...only in this manner, so the argument ran, could a real level playing field in ownership be sustained given the regulatory power of governments and their diverse and politicised interests.

We are blighted by the way things are, in our minds as much if not more than how they are on the ground...public-private partnerships have earned themselves, in many respects, a bad name. And often for good reason, as private capital fails to deliver the goods, lines of traditional public accountability are lost, and profit variously appears to be gained on the back of poor public services, or is lost by the bucketful where the politics are just too hot to handle...but these partnerships, in their immense diversity and mixed records, is the closest we have got to in experimenting in true institutional cross-dressing...yes, companies are at the table of the Global Fund for HIV, AIDS and Maleria with a profit mandate, just as labour represents its constituencies in the Ethical Trading Initiative or the MFA Forum. But ‘doing partnerships’ can have an unexpected, almost neurological impact on organisations and the folks who work in them...NGO leaders experience the profit motive, just as businesses don the garb of social mission-focused activities...

I suspect that we will not wake up any time soon and find that the traditional roles of our key institutional actors have changed, fundamentally...but it might just turn out that this is exactly what is needed to overcome the irony of those in power being constrained by their basis of accountability to make the changes that we now in some sense all know are needed. Now I am sure that I will not be celebrated or rewarded here or in heaven by encouraging such institutional cross-dressing as the hard road that we need to pass along. But it is worth at least a thought, whether we have indeed reached a Kuhnian cross-roads in the organisation of our affairs...And as do turn as a generation to the matter of governance, whether for global trade, to manage climate, to secure water, to stabilise food supplies or just to bake bread and biscuits, it is worth I believe considering some more radical options based on a hard nosed view of what is not going to work, and an insightful take on the potential offered by today’s experiements.

Watch the WFP ' A new blueprint for globalisation' video.

The events of the last twelve months have made 2008 the most important year for decades, certainly since the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Indeed, it is possible that history will place it in even higher esteem than that dramatic, fracturing moment.

Continue reading the article.

12 January

Terms of Excellence: Defining the terms of corporate responsibility, performance excellence

by Steve Rochlin, Head of North America, AccountAbility

In the last ten years, profound changes in global leadership have encouraged and pressured corporations to find solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. Central to these changes has been an informal movement among nongovernmental organization (NGO) activists, influential thought leaders, a handful of corporate leaders, a slowly building army of shareholder activists, “LOHAS”¹ (lifestyles of health and sustainability) consumers, and employees passionate about sustainability. Read more.

Deloitte has joined with Kyoto Publishing to bring the second edition of "The Sustainable Enterprise Report." The report brings thought leadership initiatives directly to C-level executives in order to share the latest on Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability.

Visit www.awarenessintoaction.com to learn more about the report.  

Global Corporate Sustainability Standards: The role of collaborative voluntary initiatives October 15th , 2008

This Net Impact discussion focuses on the role of collaborative standards initiatives in filling the gap between the actions of individual companies and the traditional and limited roles of government legislation. These initiatives, covering everything from palm oil to fish to water rights to drug pricing, have become an important part of our collective pathway towards sustainable development.

Click here to download the call with CEO Simon Zadek and to hear how these initiatives will affect emerging economies and the future of corporate responsibility.

The AccountAbility Forum held for the first time this year, saw AccountAbility's closest partners come together for a whole-network approach to developing strategy and assessing impacts. As AccountAbility expands from an international organisation based in London to a global network with representatives and active networks in numerous countries, AccountAbility increasingly is its networks.

This event was our 'accountability moment.' One of the outcomes of this event will be the AccountAbility Accounts, where we report back to society on our approach, commitment, and impacts. This year's Accounts was built live during the Forum in order to capture strategic inputs and to make sure stakeholders' opinions and suggestions are featured.

Watch the highlights from the AccountAbility Forum 2008 below. For more information on the event visit www.accountabilityforum08.net

As part of Carnegie Council's Workshop for Ethics in Business which examines the intersection of Web 2.0 technologies and the effort to hold corporations to account for both the harms and benefits they create. Web 2.0 has the potential to enable meaningful dialogue, collaboration, and problem solving between companies and their stakeholders. Will it rise to meet the challenge?

Watch Steve Rochlin talk about Web 2.0 and Corporate AccountAbility on Youtube.

Read Steve Rochlin and James Farrar's article in the Financial Times on Web 2.0 and Corporate Responsibility.

Listen to the podcast from the participants of this panel which include John Abell of wired.com; James Farrar of SAP; Gerhard Pohl of  Development Gateway Foundation; Emily Polk of CSRwire.com; Steve Rochlin of AccountAbility; Devin Stewart of Carnegie Council; and Andrew Zolli of Pop!Tech.

The new system will enable firms to build corporate-level strategies that support business development and link performance in social responsibility to quality, productivity, and efficiency.

The main components are:

• an integrated diagnostic process to quickly assess and plan according to key risks, business assets, and priority needs.
• a CSR Performance Excellence management framework that helps managers tie corporate social responsibility to business activities such as procurement, marketing, and product design.

Steve Rochlin, Head of AccountAbility North America, said “IFC’s leadership as a sustainability standard-setter and its global reach make it an ideal channel for CSR expertise. We see this partnership as a way to bring the cutting-edge practices and experiences of leading international companies to companies in emerging markets that are ready to leap ahead of the curve and achieve real business value.”

Continue reading the press release.

As the Government calls for more integrity, enhanced corporate responsibility and greater transparency in our financial systems, AccountAbility announces the Global Launch of its Leading Sustainability Assurance Standard

AccountAbility, the non-profit research institute, has announced the publication of the new edition of its world leading sustainability assurance standard AA1000AS (2008) that will look to reform independent assurance for corporate sustainability reporting and help to rebuild confidence in transparent and effective business practice.

Continue reading the press release.

Alan Knight, Head of Standards speaks to the Glasshouse Partnership (www.glasshousepartnership.com) about the development of AccountAbility's latest standard AA1000AS (2008) -which was developed with the use of a wiki platform to engage more than 4,000 stakeholders from across 90 different countries. Alan provides insight into the lessons learned and how they are applicable to other forms of stakeholder engagement.

Click here to watch the video.

A broader and more robust approach to measuring companies’ social and environmental impacts is now being used in this year’s Accountability Rating of the world’s largest companies.

Last year, for the first time, the Accountability Rating included an assessment of companies’ impacts. This was applied alongside the comprehensive evaluation of their strategy and systems that has been the basis of the Accountability Rating since its launch in 2004.

Continue reading the press release.

A new report launched by CorporateRegister.com "Assure View - The CSR Assurance Statement Report" outlines who uses assurance, who provides assurance and what methods are used. Assure View is a reference point for all stakeholders, from reporting companies and assurance providers to consumers who wish to find out more about companies' social and environmental impacts. AccountAbility, amongst other leading organisation's has provided a guest commentary for this report and welcomes the reports independent perspective on this important but fragmented field.

Paul Scott, Managing Director of CorporateRegister.com says: “This is the first time the field of CSR report assurance has been examined in such breadth and depth. Assure View examines the concepts behind CSR assurance and identifies the Key Elements which constitute best practice”

Read the press release.

Visit www.corporateregister.com to download the new report.

Anwar Ibrahim’s challenge for political leadership offers Malaysia a unique opportunity to provide global leadership in effecting a peaceful transition to a mature democratic state. Continue reading the press release.

The turning point for a new technology is when we stop talking about bits, bytes or bandwidth, and start talking about what it can really do to for business, individuals or society. When we look at the tools Web 2.0 represents, they have the potential to be game changing for those working to advance a progressive vision of the relationship of business to society.

Continue reading.

An interview with Steve Rochlin, Head of AccountAbility North America was featured on Shel Israel's Global Neighbourhoods blog which aims to reveal what impact social media has on business and culture.
Steve Rochlin highlights the fact that accountability is at the core of Corporate Social Responsibility and explains how social media is being used to generate global CSR dialogue.

To read the post, please click here.

For more information on the key findings of the research, please download the Press Release. 

To see the 2007 report focusing on UK and US consumers, please click here.

This is the second annual survey of Chinese attitudes toward corporate responsibility designed and conducted by AccountAbility and Fortune China as the March 2008 Fortune China cover story. This year's survey reveals Chinese leaders' attitudes about: which stakeholders are most important and how to engage with them, whether corporate responsibility is a trend that's here to stay, the universality of CSR standards, and whether social and environmental responsibility can improve long-term business performance.

The article was written by Joshua Wickerham and Simon Zadek.

Read the article.

25 January 2008,
Davos, Switzerland

"Embedding a citizenship approach to businesses’ engagement in public governance is a pre-condition for advancing both responsible competitiveness and more effective governance of communities and nations”, Simon Zadek, Chief Executive, AccountAbility

AccountAbility along with BSR, Harvard University School of Government, the International Leaders Business Forum and the Global Corporate Citizenship Initiative Advisory Committee to the World Economic Forum (WEF) launched a report entitled "Partnering to strengthen global governance: The leadership challenge for CEOs and Boards" at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos.

The leadership statement, signed by fourteen global CEOs and chairmen representing a range of industries, includes a supporting report designed to assist businesses looking to work with governments and other stakeholders in order for to improve sustainable economic growth and development.

In launching this effort, the signatories call for a new frontier in corporate global citizenship and a new era in public-private partnership, recognizing the increasing convergence of public and private sector agendas.

The launch of the report is related to the theme of this year's annual meeting: The Power of Collaborative Innovation.

Download the new report.

Read the press release and see the signatories of this statement. 

The MFA Forum Bangladesh Buyers Group sent a letter to the Bangladesh government on the 2^nd of February requesting rightful treatment of Mehedi Hasan and a full investigation into his arrest.   It had been reported Mr Hasan was only allowed limited communication with his family and employers, and brief contact with a lawyer. There was also a great concern over his treatment in prison. The letter was signed by Wal-Mart, Tesco, M&S, H&M, Inditex, Next, Nike, Levi Strauss, Gap, Walt Disney company, Jones Apparel, Tchibo and Carrefour.

The day after submitting the letter the Bangladesh government announced the release of Mr Hasan. This was likely a consequence of the international pressure, including joint efforts of the buyers sourcing out of the country.

Encouraged by this positive turn, the MFA Forum will continue to work collaboratively with the stakeholders including the government to ensure improved labour standards in Bangladesh.

http://www.labourbehindthelabel.org/campaigns/urgent/bangladesh/90-bangladeshcrackdown/225-bangladesh-crackdown

AccountAbility's traditional end of year message from Chief Executive, Simon Zadek details the highlights and low-lights of accountability in the global community during 2007.

"2007 is the year of the belated consensus that climate change may destroy us all within most of our lifetimes. Awarding the Nobel Prize for Peace to the International Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore exemplified this recognition. But slow progress at the UN-sponsored talks in Bali highlighted how tough it is going to be to turn this into practical action, a case of political accountability to domestic interested undermining action for both the common good and, ultimately, the good of those self-same domestic actors."

Click here to continue reading.

Steve Rochlin reviews the accountability and governance initiatives currently being developed to counter corruption.  Fighting Corruption: Perspectives from AccountAbility, part of Policy Innovations’ (program of Carnegie Council) second Workshop for Ethics in Business, New York City on September 19, 2007. 

Steve says many companies are starting to tackle corruption, though they face obstacles such as the free rider problem and variations in the cultural acceptability of corruption. He gives examples of how a more dynamic conception of accountability emerges when an organization sets expectations with a broader range of stakeholders: industry-wide, in local communities, and with the public sector.

I have just returned form the first three sustainability assurance consultation workshops - Seoul Korea, October 11; Sydney Australia, October 16; and Melbourne Australia, October 18. And in another week I am off to the workshop in India. Apart from living in a constant state of jet lag, I am feeling very upbeat about the consultations so far. There has been a high level of engagement and excellent debate. As the workshop reports indicate, we are getting a lot of very good input - both for our deliberations on the future of sustainability assurance and for the revision of the AA1000 assurance standard.

 

Alan (centre) with representatives of local partners BISD Korea and sd3

The local partners all did a great job. In Korea, BISD Korea, sd3 and BSI Korea drew an excellent and knowledgeable crowd. The workshop was held in the Council chambers of the Business Institute for Sustainable Development. Banarra, with support from Stockland, also did a great job in Sydney. The professions were well represented and the level of debate was high. In Melbourne, our partner Netbalance, with support from Transurban, attracted a very engaged group of companies, experts, NGOs and standards people. Vodafone was also active in Australia as lead partner as well as in the debates in both Sydney and Melbourne. The local partners also arranged a number of side meetings with reporting companies, NGOs and professionals in each city.

A number of themes are emerging. People want a more rigorous standard. They want terms clearly defined; they want relationships with other standards and guidelines clearly explained; they want more methodological guidance; and they want inconsistencies with ISAE 3000 removed. There is strong agreement on the continuing value of the principles and of stakeholder engagement. But people would like this expanded to include principles for information quality such as those in GRI G3. There is also considerable interest in greater professionalisation of the discipline of sustainability assurance. People are calling for a practitioner code of ethics or conduct. In addition to practitioner certification (e.g. CSAP) people are calling for the accreditation of the organizations that provide sustainability assurance. They want greater consistency and comparability of service.

Look out for new blogs and podcasts coming from the consultations. And register now to participate in the wiki.

Over a dozen Sustainability Assurance Consultation Workshops will be held around the world between October 2007 and January 2008.

The purpose of the consultation workshops is to identify and debate the issues that need to be addressed during the revision process and to develop recommendations both for the second edition of the standard and for the future of sustainability assurance.

By participating in these consultations, you will have the opportunity to influence the second edition of AA1000AS at the earliest stage of its development and you will be connected to a network of leading practitioners, users and other interested parties. You will help define the future state of assurance and help to set the practice benchmark for the next 4-6 years.

Click here for more information.

High street fashion: the ethical dilemma

Live debate during London Fashion Week While buying teams at top fashion retailers hurry to translate new ‘looks’ showcased at London Fashion Week into affordable high street clothes in record-breaking time, the teams responsible for ethical trading face a different challenge; making sure the workers who make the clothes don’t pay the price.

Senior managers at companies including Gap Inc., H&M, Tesco and Asda George join, among others, Social Accountability International, Oxfam International and the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers’ Federation during London Fashion Week to discuss how to marry consumer demand for the latest trends at the lowest price with the need for companies to help protect the rights of workers in countries like Bangladesh, where up to 20 million people depend directly or indirectly on the garment sector for their livelihood.

Bangladesh is one of the cheapest countries in the world to produce clothing, but rising inflation and increased competition from exporting giants China and India has put extra pressure on already hard-pressed suppliers and factory owners.

At a public event ‘Positive buying: confronting the challenge between buying practices and workers’ rights’, hosted by the Multi-Fibre Arrangement Forum, brands, civil society representatives and manufacturers debate the ethical challenges faced by the high street fashion industry. The debate will be chaired by Dan Rees, Director of the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI).

Says Rees, “ETI members’ ethical trade activities are starting to make a difference to workers around the world, but what’s urgently needed now is for companies across the board to take a much more strategic approach, joining the dots between the ethical trade teams and the buying teams, so that workers don’t pay the price for our demand for fashion.”

Dan Henkle, Senior Vice President of Social Responsibility of ETI member company Gap. Inc will speak at the event. He says, “““We’ve been taking a close look at our own practices to understand how we can make better decisions as a company. The more we learn, the more we believe that good business and good working conditions are linked – and we’re constantly searching for new and innovative ways to improve in both areas.”

Says Maggie Burns of the MFA Forum, “the way all brands and retailers purchase product should be integral to their ethical trade agenda. This meeting is an opportunity to participate in this critical debate and to hear from some of the leaders in the field about what’s happening in the textile and garment industry.”

Speakers at the event on 19 September include Dan Henkle, SVP of Social Responsibility at Gap INC., Osama Taseer, Director at Tiffany’s Wear Limited, garments supplier, and Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director at Oxfam International.

- ends -

Media enquiries:

Julia Hawkins at ETI

+44 (0)20 404 1463/07967 498 340

Julia@eti.org.uk

Signe Jensen at AccountAbility

+44 20 7459 0400

signe@accountability21.net

Notes to editors:

1. The MFA Forum is an open network of companies, trade unions, non-governmental organisations and international institutions working to mitigate the impact of the end of textile and garment quotas on workers. The Forum is currently working in Bangladesh and Lesotho and is working in Morocco through the ILO decent Work Programme. In addition, the Forum has a working group on issues in the Americas and two working groups looking at the critical issues facing the sector during transitions: responsible closure and responsible buying practices.

2. AccountAbility is the international non-profit, membership organisation established in 1995 to promote accountability innovations for sustainable development. AccountAbility serves as the Secretariat for the MFA Forum. Further details about AccountAbility are available at www.accountability21.net

3. The Ethical Trading Initiative was established in 1998 to improve the lives of workers and their families in global supply chains. It believes that companies producing, supplying and selling goods for consumer markets should observe national and international labour laws. Its purpose is to identify and promote responsible corporate practice that will help make this a reality. Find out more at www.ethicaltrade.org

The AA1000AS is the first non-proprietary, open-source Assurance Standard that covers the full range of an organisation's disclosure and performance. In applying the AA1000 Assurance Standard (AA1000AS), the Assurance Provider evaluates the credibility of the sustainability report, and assesses the underlying systems and processes that deliver the relevant information and underpin the organisation’s performance.

Free copies of this publication are available, all you need to do is pay for the postage.

For free copies and more information please contact Jolene Lambert 

On 20-21 August 2007 the Club de Madrid in partnership with AccountAbility is organizing the high-level workshop “Energy and Democratic Leadership: Promoting Access to Energy for Poverty Reduction” in Santander, Spain. The workshop aims to develop a compelling set of recommendations for democratic leaders to improve energy access to the poor, while managing demands for energy security and the risk of climate change.

The workshop will feature leaders such as Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland; Sadig Al Mahdi, former Prime Minister of Sudan, and Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States; together with energy experts from energy companies, civil society organisations and international development institutions.

The partnership between the Club de Madrid and AccountAbility, builds on the Club’s political leverage - 66 former Presidents and Prime Ministers - and AccountAbility’s track record on collaborative governance for development. Over the next two years, the partnership will continue its work on promoting energy access to the poor through in-country activities in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

AccountAbility's Senior Advisor, Alejandro Litovsky leads this work and is the content coordinator for the Santander workshop.

Click here to see the Workshop Agenda and speakers. Please circulate the press release - click here for the Spanish version.

The Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal welcomes submissions related to the conference theme. Symposium proceedings will be published in The Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal. For more information on the topics and issues the symposium wishes to address, please click here. To read further about the Symposium call for papers please click here.

For more information please visit http://islandia.law.yale.edu/yhrdlj

Simon Zadek will be presenting a plenary session on 'What is the future of CSR through productive chains?', on Tuesday, December 11th from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m.

The V Inter-American Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility is organised by the Inter-American Development Bank, in partnership with Centro para la Acción de la Responsabilidad Social Empresarial - CentraRSE.

For more information, please visit www.csramericas.org

Performance Excellence Tool to help Compact Signatories integrate responsible business practices into core business strategy 

The United Nations Global Compact, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Global Leadership Network (GLN) have formed a joint partnership to help UN Global Compact signatories, IFC clients and the wider private sector in emerging markets integrate corporate citizenship into business strategy and performance. The new partnership was unveiled during the closing plenary session at the UN Global Compact Leaders Summit in Geneva on July 5, 2007.

Founded by IBM, AccountAbility, the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship, and nine other industry leaders, GLN has created a landmark community to define and achieve performance excellence in corporate citizenship. The network continues to grow in stature and size, to over thirty leaders from around the world with regional networks in China, Brazil and Europe and partners such as the Chinese Federation for CSR, Rever Consulting and the Corporate Citizenship Company.

GLN has established a learning and leadership group striving to embed responsible business practices as a driver of long term, sustainable competitive performance. Now, this unique partnership will open up the group’s learnings and frameworks to companies of all sizes, sectors and regions by providing them with free access to GLN’s interactive strategic planning and assessment tool.

The tool draws on an extensive database of good practice case studies, real-time benchmarking and automated reporting to provide users with the necessary information on key strategic alignment efforts. For UN Global Compact signatories in particular, the GLN Global Compact Implementation Tool will enable companies to:

• determine strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; identify mission critical citizenship priorities;
• set plans for action, specify targets and support Communications on Progress

As a result, companies will be able to assess how the Global Compact’s ten principles and other sustainability issues serve as productive drivers of business performance that add value for owners and society alike.

A free tool will also be made available to IFC clients and companies in emerging and developing markets. “For corporate citizenship to deliver on its potential it must become fundamental to strategy and operations,” says Steve Rochlin, Head of AccountAbility North America. “The partnership among GLN, the UN Global Compact, and IFC now enables companies around the world to reach this potential.”

The new tool will be accessible via an exclusive website at www.gln-openaccess.org.

To see the article on CSRwire, please click here 

For more information, contact

Aris Vrettos, Global Leadership Network;
+44 207 549 0400; + 44 776 8393 745 (cell)