Corporate Social Responsibility
Last Wednesday the Canadian High Commission in Georgetown hosted a forum on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), a concept that has gained considerable ground in recent years in the global discourse on the issue of desirable operating practices in the international corporate community.
In practice CSR is about the infusion of socially acceptable practices into corporate behaviour. The refinement of the concept is linked to studies on the nexus between various forms of socially responsible behaviour and the growth, development and even the survival of people and communities.
Canada being a country that is well-known for its large and technologically advanced mining sector, the forum placed the discourse on CSR within the framework of the desirability of environmentally friendly practices in the mining sector, recognizing at the same time that CSR embraces the behavioural practices of the corporate community as a whole. It is no secret, of course, that the global mining and resource extraction practices are facing a range of social challenges arising out of divergent views on the impact of mining on communities and the environment. The case for the sector’s track record on socially responsibly practices is often weakened by numerous examples of environmental degradation and economic exploitation and abuse of the human rights of indigenous communities.
The tenets of CSR oblige mining operations to pursue their extraction of minerals in such a manner as to ensure a mindfulness of the need to protect and preserve the environment and a sensitivity to and support for the social, cultural and economic interests of host communities -, in most cases, indigenous communities and that, in considerable measure, is what last Wednesday’s forum addressed.
While the concept, in its purest form, derives from a voluntary, “good citizen” approach to socially responsible corporate behaviour – though it should not be confused with corporate philanthropy – it has now become enveloped in a strong element of compulsoriness, a circumstance that has resulted from increasing global emphasis on issues like environmental protection, human rights, the rights of indigenous peoples and the right of workers to fair wages and safe working conditions. In fact, it is largely because issues like these have assumed an increased global significance that CSR has been incrementally refined to a point where it has become a ‘discipline’ in its own right.
While it is probably reasonable to assume that there are business enterprises that have for years been quiet adherents of CSR long before the term was even ‘invented’, the elevation of CSR to its current exalted status and the element of compulsoriness derive, at least in part, from a realization that issues like the preservation of the environment and the protection of people’s rights, including the rights of indigenous peoples, are too important to be left to the altruism of the corporate community whose primary focus, after all, is profit.
But that is not all. The concept of CSR is premised on the perfectly sound argument that environmentally friendly operating practices and respect for the rights of workers and host communities – in the mining and forestry sectors, for example – can actually create a more socially and economically sustainable working environment. In other words, CSR is good for business.
The degree to which CSR has become institutionalized in the global business environment is manifested in the fact that agreements between countries and major international mining and forestry entities actually contain clauses that bind companies to various forms of socially responsible behaviour particularly in relation to the environment and interaction with host communities.
Guyana has followed this trend in its contractual agreements with mining and forestry companies. As far as we can tell there has been an acceptable degree of adherence to CSR by expatriate companies even though there are examples of mining undertakings by expatriate companies that pose environmental challenges.
The same level of compliance with CSR standards is of course not evident in some locally run mining operations where self-regulation simply cannot be relied upon and where logistical considerations make official monitoring and enforcement difficult.
A good example of the challenge that we face in domestic mining operations lies in the recent incident in Region Eight where roads were dug up, water pipes displaced and an entire community discommoded as a result of irresponsible mining activity.
This of course gives rise to another issue. While the importance of an environmentally responsible approach to mining (and logging) operations can hardly be overstated, questions arise over Guyana’s ability to effectively enforce responsible practices in those sectors and particularly in the mining sector.
Prime Minister Samuel Hinds who speaks for the mining sector in the National Assembly is not unaware of this dilemma though one suspects that his ‘report card’ of “eighty to ninety per cent good” and “ten to twenty per cent bad” as far as responsible mining practices by local operators is concerned, errs on the side of considerable generosity to the local miners.
Incremental hinterland development and the increasingly important role of the mining (both gold and bauxite) and forestry sectors to the country’s economy are bound to place increasing pressure on both the government and the corporate community to take a more serious look at incorporating the tenets of CSR into the wider interior development strategy. Here it is not just a question of protecting the environment and respecting people’s rights. It is also a question of adhering to internationally acceptable CSR standards failing which, as the international CSR lobby intensifies, we may well find ourselves confronting economically damaging sanctions.
Beyond the mining sector, of course, there are other issues that surface within the CSR framework……… like the questionable nature of health and safety practices in several public and private sector workplaces, the poor record of several local businesses as far as the remittance of employee NIS contributions is concerned; and the piles of garbage derived from commercial activity that litter our streets and clog our drains.
One hopes, of course, that the initiative by the Canadian High Commission serves as a precursor to the creation of a strong and enforceable policy framework for CSR in Guyana given the importance of socially responsible corporate behaviour to the country’s social and economic advancement.
What we do not want is for CSR to become a cliché out of which emerges a host of ‘experts’ and a mind-boggling body of academia that places the issue in a thicket of time-consuming and meaningless discourse that loses sight of the importance of expeditious implementation of socially responsible practices in the local corporate community.
