Copyright
©
Flavio Cotrim Pinheiro
2001-2002. All rights reserved.
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The
ICC Project 2001
The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) launched its Business
Charter for Sustainable Development in 1990. The Charter consisted
of a short introduction and a set of 16 principles for environmental
management and has been one of the most discussed ICC environmental
efforts.
The ICC Project 2001 may provide ground for the ongoing dialogue related
to the role and effectiveness of voluntary initiatives, particularly
those to be launched in South Africa during the 2002 United Nations
World Summit on Sustainable Development.
ICC claims that more than 2,300 companies have formally supported
the Charter. Although ICC makes the list of companies available to
whoever is interested in it, very little research has been done on
the Charter supporters and on their performance in implementing the
Charter principles.
The ICC Project 2001 report begins with three chapters on the ICC,
voluntary environmental initiatives, and the ICC Charter. It follows
with an analysis of the current list of Charter supporters, one assessment
on reporting practices of a random sample of 768 supporters, and another
assessment of reporting practices of Brazilian Charter supporters.
Environment-related reports available online were analyzed for these
supporters.
The analysis shows that the list of signatories contains some duplications
and errors and that more than 90% of the supporters come from only
24 countries. Of the supporters, 29% come from Malaysia alone.
Of the random sample of 768 supporters, 167 had reports available
on the Internet with varying expressions of commitment to the environment,
description of environmental activities and environmental indicators.
Of the 41 Brazilian supporters, 21 had reports available on the Internet.
The Brazilian reports were also benchmarked to the Global Reporting
Initiative sustainability reporting guidelines, what confirmed the
lack of basic environmental data in all reports.
The ICC Project 2001 raises questions about the credibility of voluntary
initiatives that are not enforced or monitored by their sponsoring
organizations. It also calls for the inclusion of social as well as
economic and environmental concerns in future sustainable development
initiatives to promote strong and sincere efforts from developing
countries.
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The ICC Project 2001 is an assessment of the Business Charter for
Sustainable Development carried out by Flavio Cotrim Pinheiro during
his Graduate studies at Tufts University (Medford, MA)
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