Pakistan, CSR, Sustainability and the Global Economic Crisis
Enrico Wensing, a sustainability expert and PhD student at Saybrook, is the founder of Ecosphere Net and has also authored I Am Sustainability: How the Human Body can Save the Planet. Social Bridges is grateful to him for writing a post on his perception/ideas for the socially responsible business in Pakistan.
In the current special issue of The Economist entitled The World in 2009 Daniel Franklin writes,
“In 2009 sustainability will take on a new meaning in boardrooms: staying in business….
It has become almost obligatory for executives to claim that CSR is ‘connected to the core’ of corporate strategy, or that it has become ‘part of the DNA’. In truth, even ardent advocates of sustainability struggle to identify more than a handful of examples. More often the activities that go under the sustainability banner are a hotch-potch of pet projects at best tenuously related to the core business. The coming shake-out will help to remove some of this froth.”
Citing the continuance of political regulatory and punitive incentives in 2009 as reasons, Franklin goes on to say that even in the current global economic crisis it would be a mistake for companies to let their, albeit parsimonious, commitment to CSR fade.
Similarly, the New York Times ran a story this morning entitled “Economic Slump May Limit Moves on Clean Energy” which captures the apparently growing sentiment within some of corporate culture that, for all intents and purposes, industry cannot deal with the financial crisis and reduce climate changing emissions at the same time.
Yes we can! And, yes we must!
What made CSR and sustainability smart and right last summer when fuel prices were high and the economy was perceived as being better still makes sense during the current global economic crisis, especially for the emerging markets in developing countries.
There are many reasons for this; perhaps the most obvious is the fact that we should not forget about long-term goals, namely our efforts to mitigate global warming through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, which remain just as real as short-term economic goals. Just this morning there was a press release by the UN that greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb and have now reached record high levels.
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