Ralph Hamann, senior researcher at the University of Cape Town’s environmental evaluation unit, takes a broader view of corporate social responsibility (CSR), bringing in international trends. He sketches a number of new issues.
‘The international investment community is really developing a lot of steam on sustainability issues, especially climate change. This is evidenced, for instance, in the Carbon Disclosure Project, through which investors totalling more than $40-trillion are putting pressure on companies to do something on climate change (http://www.cdproject.net).
‘The noteworthy thing is that South African investors are still seeing this as green add-on stuff and they need to wake up!”
He adds that this is despite the fact that South Africa is likely to be hard hit by climate change.
He is puzzled, however, about why South African businesses are not reaping the benefits of the clean development mechanism (CDM) — which allows developed country companies to offset their greenhouse gas emissions through climate-friendly projects in developing countries — as much as they should. So, for instance, there has been a much bigger uptake of CDM projects in India by comparison. Companies like Sasol are realising that this is becoming a key business risk for them, and they have established carbon reduction targets — but who is to say that this is enough, he asks.
He says companies are slowly waking up to the issue of human rights and anti-corruption, the laggards in the CSR debate.
‘Especially companies like Sasol, which are growing into Africa and beyond, need to do a lot more homework on this, and they are somewhat behind the international leaders.”
On anti-corruption, he adds, business is realising that a collective, collaborative approach is necessary — hence the hopeful signs coming from the SA Anti-Corruption Forum, which is led by government but has business as a key contributor. In Malawi a similar initiative has been initiated by business. Many lessons still need to be learnt in developing cross-sectoral approaches to these public benefit issues, he says, and adds that indeed climate change is a similar example.
As 2010 looms, there is much to be done in the field of public/private partnerships (PPPs). The bureaucratic systems for accountability of the PPPs seem to be in place, but there is too little discussion about broader accountability to the public interest.
Some really intractable issues where CSR is just not making any dents remain, the key issue being genetic modification or GM, says Hamann. Some companies, he says, are giving business in general a bad name by bashing NGOs like Biowatch, and misusing the legal system.
‘The question arises, why is GM such a conflictual space? My guess is that GM leaves little space for common ground: you’re either for it or against it, and the GM industry has not been able to see the other side of the argument at all, and it is actively trying to shut it out.
‘Trouble is that government seems a bit unsure where it stands as well.”