Strategy and society: from CSR to shared value

A presentation by Michael Porter from HBS, showing how creating social value is absolutely compatible with creating sustainable economic value. He defines Shared Value as: "Policies and practices that enhance the competitiveness of a company while simultaneously advancing economic and social conditions in the communities in which it operates".

Understanding your business' poverty footprint

Companies, particularly those operating in developing countries, should be aware about the impacts on society caused by their operations. Understanding the links between business and development can highlight real opportunities for enlightened businesses to make a positive difference.

Oxfam has prepared a paper to explain its Poverty Footprint Methodology, which helps companies to comprehensively understand how their operations affect the people in their value chains and the communities and countries where they operate. The methodology combines local assessments of livelihood impacts, value chain analysis, and an assessment of economic contributions into one comprehensive approach.

Similarly, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) is working in the WBCSD Measuring Impact Framework, which will be profiled as the basic foundation for any company wishing to measure, understand and manage their impacts on development. Such framework will incorporate some of the lessons learned from the Measuring Impact case studies and the advancement in the measuring socio-economic impact field over the last two years.

Community Development Toolkit

The Community Development Toolkit was published in November 2005, jointly by ICMM, the World Bank and ESMAP. It was developed to support government, industry, and community efforts to realize more sustainable community development around mining and mineral processing operations.

The Toolkit contains two main parts:

• 17 Tools which cover the assessment, planning, management, and evaluation phases of community development as well as stakeholder relationships.
• A Background volume, which contains the background and context to the project as well as an examination of the mineral policies and mining laws necessary for mineral activity to contribute to sustainable development.

Top companies in Brazil report greenhouse emissions

Some of Brazil's largest companies have started to voluntarily measure and publicly report their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions using the Brazil GHG Protocol Program, a project of the World Resources Institute (WRI).

In addition, Brazil has recently enacted a law imposing cuts to CO2 emissions.

The resource curse: new evidence from Brazil

Following a previous post on the resource curse, a new study about oil findings and its impact on the expenditures of the "blessed" municipalities.

I agree with the authors that transparency is not the magic bullet. Long-term planning and guidance (technnical mainly) is required not to waste the new income.

Compras públicas sustentables… un paso eficiente a imitar

El blog de ProHumana ha publicado una nota redactada por Felipe Goya Goddard, Director de ChileCompra, quien relata como la entidad ha elaborado una Directiva de Eficiencia Energética, misma que indica a los organismos públicos cómo incorporar criterios de eficiencia energética en sus licitaciones. También elaboró en conjunto con el Programa País de Eficiencia Energética un Manual de compras energéticamente eficientes y una guía práctica, entre otras iniciativas. Cabe destacar que en Chile existe la Ley 19.886 que impone criterios de sustentabilidad a las compras estatales. Según relata el Sr. Goya Goddard, actualmente, y gracias al sistema de compras públicas, el Estado ahorra cerca de 140 millones de dólares, cifra que se puede incrementar al considerar temas tan sencillos como el reciclaje o la eficiencia energética.

Transporte de materiales peligrosos - Industria Minera

Una herramienta interesante , que combina Google Earth, las normas vigentes en Perú, links a diversos sitios, etc. para crear una interfaz eficaz para la prevención de riesgos en el transporte de materiales peligrosos. Como plataforma, es potencialmente aplicable a otras industrias y países.

CSR Reporting Improves in 2009, but not for all

Two reports from the Social Investment Forum (SIF) provide important updates on the status of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting, both among the S&P 100 companies headquartered in the US, and among the 100 largest companies in ten emerging markets.

Territory, Conflicts and Development in the Andes

The University of Manchester under its TCD–Andes Research Programme aimed to contributing to better policy making in the Andean Region and to produce knowledge on the political ecology of social conflicts in the rural area, the factors driving the geography of NGOs and social movements as they relate to these conflicts and the relationships between civil society and political economy, has recently published a study on the challenges to sustainable mining in Peru.

More on defining, measuring and optimizing value creation of inclusive business

Following previous articles on the measuring of value created by BOP inclusive-business, a new report from WBCSD on this topic, plus a presentation on the WBCSD Measuring Impact Framework