Martina from Eldis blogs the current GRI conference, where GRI G3 is officially released - more information on the draft version of these guidelines for Corporate Responsibility at Ethical Corporation.
The Equator principles have been criticised for dealing only with project finance and to ignoring other forms of lending which can also lead to negative social and environmental impact. Also, the well-known Global Compact problem of "Free Riders" applies to these principles, too.
And, the debate of lacking NGO-accountability raised their head for the umpteenth time:
Why should corporations listen to calls for greater transparency and engage with NGOs criticism, if the NGOs themselves are perceived to be unaccountable and non-transparent?
As Martina points out, NGOs have done a lot in the last few years to improve their accountabilty but as there seems to be a marked difference between the business of business and the business of NGOs, acountability standards should probably be handled differently anyway. However, she concludes that there is a clear business case for NGOs to do better - as long as they want to engage with the business community.
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