September 8th, 2010
The working sessions of the Stockholm World Water Week are underway … Alex McIntosh takes a look at new initiatives getting off the ground.
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“Day 2 of World Water Week: Stockholm, Sweden (9/6/10)”
(posted by Alex McIntosh, founder, Ecomundi Ventures)
The luminaries of the water field took the podium today. Dr. Rita Colwell of the US was recognized as the 2010 Stockholm Water Prize winner (equivalent to the Nobel Prize for water) for her groundbreaking work on cholera. And Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations Environmental Program shared his agency’s Green Economy Initiative program focus–responding to one of the most pressing social needs today–on integrating water into the larger policy and market-based decisions made by officials at local, regional, national and global levels.
Connecting the dots is important, as the science is often a few steps ahead of the social debate, and bad policy today will have profound implications for the 9 billion humans projected for earth in 2040–and for the corporations that depend on reliable water resources for their operations.
Later in the day, the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS), a consortium of NGO’s and institutes including Nature Conservancy, WWF, and Pacific Institute, provided an update on their efforts to develop a global water certification program. To bring this water certification program to life, the AWS is building a global non-profit through an extensive stakeholder engagement process. The non-profit will eventually include international standards for water management, a verification process, a recognizable brand, and an independent governance body. The scope of the voluntary water certification program will include the private sector (including agriculture), as well as water service providers. A “launch meeting” was just held in Brussels in June, with some 200 stakeholders addressing a series of framing questions and reviewing key principles: water quality, biodiversity, and governance.
Post-Brussels, the AWS will form a global steering committee, and facilitate the piloting of the certification program with stakeholders in each of the 7 global regions. Coca-Cola, BASF, HOLMEN Paper and other corporations are currently participating in the regional certification pilots.
Companies interested in learning more, or in participating in the water certification pilots should visit the AWS website at: http://www.allianceforwaterstewardship.org/
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Tags: achim steiner, alex mcintosh, alliance for water stewardship, ecomundi, pacific institute, stockholm, water certification, world water week, wwf
Posted in Business & Human Rights, Infrastructure, News & Events, Right to Water | No comments so far »
March 5th, 2010
From Juliette Terzieff, Senior Director, Global Stakeholder Initiatives:
Interaction with United Nations Special Representative John Ruggie is an eye-opener. Well, I guess he’d say “a game changer,” but however you want to phrase it, Ruggie’s work to define roles and recommend parameters for his 3 pillar approach to business and human rights is going to change the way corporations and their stakeholders view human rights.
It’s about time.
For the last couple decades environmental and human rights activists groups have increasingly targeted corporate behavior in their campaigns – there have been some noticeable campaign “victories” and positive changes.
But broadly speaking the systemic problems at the root of issues like child labor, freedom of expression remain. Figuring out the role corporations and their stakeholders can play in addressing them remains a time-intensive conundrum.
(more…)
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Tags: 3 pillars, activists, business, coca-cola, hewlett packard, human rights, human rights council, john ruggie, know and show, name and shame, protect, remedy, respect, un
Posted in Business & Human Rights, Labor & Transparency, Stakeholder & Campaign News, Stakeholder Engagement | 1 Comment »
February 19th, 2010
From Juliette Terzieff, Senior Director, Global Stakeholder Initiatives:
[Reprinted with permission from World Politics Review]
Human rights activists are turning up the heat on British company Vedanta Resources over charges that its operations threaten the existence of India’s Dongria Kondh tribe. Cast as a “David versus Goliath” fight by the tribe and its supporters, the Vedanta story comes at a time when stakeholders continue to look for a firm definition and application of a community engagement concept known as Free, Prior, Informed Consent (FPIC), to benefit indigenous peoples around the world.
Survival International has appealed to the makers of the blockbuster movie “Avatar” to help the Dongria Kondh fight off mining plans and the pollution resulting from Vedanta’s operations in Orissa state. Vedanta and its subsidiaries already have government approval to expand current aluminum refinery operations and move forward with plans to mine the Niyamgiri Hills for bauxite.
(more…)
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Tags: amnesty international, avatar, business and human rights, dongria kondh, human rights, india, Indigenous Rights, james cameron, john ruggie, orissa, three pillar framework, un special representative, united nations, vedanta
Posted in Business & Human Rights, Community Engagement, Indigenous Rights, Labor & Transparency, Stakeholder & Campaign News | 3 Comments »
January 27th, 2010
From Erik Wohlgemuth, our VP of Strategic Operations:
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission significantly bolsters the rights of corporations, affirming and expanding a corporation’s individual rights to free speech in elections by removing spending limits on political campaigns. While the same limits are removed for civil society groups like non-profits and unions, the disparity in spending between corporations and all others will likely deepen, enabling cash-rich companies to gain increasing access and influence over elected officials.
(more…)
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Tags: campaign spending limits, civil society, corporate rights, individual rights, non-profits, political unfluence, supreme court
Posted in Business & Human Rights, Labor & Transparency, Misc | No comments so far »
January 14th, 2010
From Juliette Terzieff, Senior Director of our Global Stakeholder Initiatives:
[Republished with permission from World Politics Review.]
Human rights advocates around the globe are cheering an announcement from Google, Inc. that it will no longer censor content in China, following a cyber attack on its infrastructure that originated there. The move could force the company’s withdrawal from the Chinese market.
Google believes the goal of the attack was to access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights advocates.
(more…)
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Tags: censorship, china, Free Expression, google, internet, privacy rights, yahoo!
Posted in Free Expression, Labor & Transparency, News & Events, Technology | No comments so far »
January 3rd, 2010
From Shiela Oviedo, Research Manager, Global Stakeholder Initiatives:
“Conflict minerals” officially made it to the New York Times’ 2009 list of buzzwords released on December 19. Does this mean that they have gained the notoriety of “blood diamonds”? Not yet (at least not without Leonardo DiCaprio to shine some star power on the issue) … but the NYT acknowledgement does clearly suggest advocacy to raise the issue of conflict minerals has come a long way – “conflict minerals” have gone mainstream.
(more…)
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Tags: armed groups, cellular phones, coltan, computers, conflict, conflict minerals, consumer electronics, democratic republic of congo, finance, gold, mining, rights abuses, tantalum, tin
Posted in Business & Human Rights, Labor & Transparency, Stakeholder & Campaign News, Supply Chain | No comments so far »
