RGCE Organizing
Workshop was held on June 15-16, 2006. For the summary of the meeting,
click here: RGCE
Workshop Summary
Overview
of the Workshop
The purpose of the workshop is to provide
a forum for sharing information and assessing what lessons can be
learned across various civil society groups working on corporate accountability
issues either in a standard setting, certification, monitoring, or
advocacy role, as well as whether a meta-level framework can be understood/established
for the topic.
The
workshop will consist of a global core group of 20 to 25 civil society
leaders working on corporate engagement and accountability issues. Participants
include representatives from labor and NGOs such as corporate campaigners;
accountability groups that develop/operate standards-based certification
initiatives, codes of conduct and/or reporting protocols; research institutions;
and NGOs working directly with corporate decision-makers to change policies
and practices from within.
As a result of the workshop, the RGCE committee hopes to create a consensus
outlook regarding what next steps can be taken to better coordinate
the efforts of civil society groups addressing corporate reform and
accountability issues, so as to substantially enhance their influence
on corporations.
Projected
Outcomes of the Conference
- Scope the state-of-play
of corporate engagement, and based on the shared understanding of
participants, explore how to collaborate and coordinate more effectively
in order to achieve social and environmental change.
- Identify key issues and concerns that must be addressed if the NGO
community is to successfully achieve its goals.
- Gain consensus on one or more international coordination strategies
to facilitate ongoing interaction between and among NGOs undertaking
various corporate engagement activities and approaches.
- Identify (and assign responsibility for) immediate next steps necessary
to implement the coordination strategy, both within and across various
engagement approaches.
Background
of the RGCE Project
This project grows out of three separate initiatives aligned with this
project's goals.
1. Reinventing Globalization: This was a November 2005 meeting where
about 80 civil society representatives met around the concept of shifting
the direction of globalization to integrate social and environmental
concerns. One subgroup of about 20 at that meeting convened around the
concept of vastly enhancing the impact of civil society activity vis-à-vis
corporations. This proposal results from follow-on efforts of that subgroup.
2. NGO Caucus on Corporate Engagement: This grew out of several years
of analysis of the role of civil society in global change, a meeting
of leaders of several global NGOs and plans to create a forum for civil
society to explore and develop ways of working together globally to
influence business to serve the common good.
3. The Business Ethics Network (Corporate Ethics International): This
is the most advanced of the initiatives, and has the goal to bring corporations
back to their original purpose to serve the common good. It comprises
three project areas: building the skills of corporate campaigners, transforming
the corporation through defining legal reforms and retail campaigns,
and organizing a corporate campaign research center. Although to date
largely US-based, it sees globalization of its efforts as critical.
The
Reinventing Globalization meeting has spurred activity to combine these
efforts. Teleconferences have further refined the vision of next steps.
Issues
and Opportunities
NGOs have proven to be very successful at changing corporate behavior
by the use of high-profile publicity campaigns and advocacy. Other NGOs
have built substantial capacity to apply measurement and reporting frameworks
to corporations to make them more accountable. This includes activities
of setting standards and creating corollary systems of certification
and monitoring. Yet other NGOs have shown that cooperative arrangements
with companies can be an effective means of promoting best practice
and improving social and environmental performance. This project aims
to develop the opportunity to leverage this poorly connected array of
activities to make a much more powerful and comprehensive strategy with
respect to realizing corporate accountability. This would address some
of the following weaknesses currently:
1) Issue fragmentation: NGOs tend to form around particular concerns
such as labour rights, forests, water use and trade policies. These
also tend to gravitate toward a single (or subset) of tactics and tools
with which they've has success or gained proficiency. Moreover, NGOs
usually have restricted geographic coverage. Consequently, accountability
expertise and structures are highly fragmented. Corporations both have
difficulty in responding to numerous specialized issues, and can more
easily ignore NGOs concerned with only one issue than if they worked
more collaboratively.
2) "Evolving" accountability landscape: Issues continue to
arise that need developing and integrating into broader accountability
frameworks. For example, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition is still
at an early stage of raising issues concerning disposal of computers
and the group is investigating what standards and auditing tools can
be used to ensure accountability in high-tech companies' supply chains.
Friends of the Earth and other NGOs are looking to establish a mechanism
to evaluate financial sector conformity with the Equator Principles.
And Corporate Accountability International is in the nascent stages
of developing a code of conduct for corporations' role in the public
policy domain. What can these groups learn from the experience of more
established initiatives such as Fairtrade, FSC, GRI, etc, and what can
be done to advance a meta-level framework for yet to emerge NGO initiatives.
3) Global NGO Fragmentation: Collectively civil society represents an
impressive array of campaigning and accountability resources. However,
they continue to be highly fragmented globally. ISEAL, for example,
is an important group applying leading international standard-setting,
certification and accreditation organizations that focus on social and
environmental issues. However, its membership is small and weakly connected
to the broader global NGO community that is increasingly engaging in
the activities but does not see itself as certification-focused. Similarly,
the GRI has NGOs as organizational stakeholders, but they remain weakly
organized amongst themselves and work in the context of a multi-stakeholder
initiative with little formal coordination with the larger NGO community.
4) Weaknesses in Monitoring: The issue of monitoring continues to be
pernicious and while there is agreement that those "on the ground"
must be involved, this implies much more capacity and extensive organizing
than current networks provide.
5) Lack of Strategic Coordination: NGOs engaged in standards setting
and certification are often seen at cross-purposes with advocacy NGOs
whose work is often essential to move companies to accept the standards.
Even when they are in alignment in principle, they are not always strategically
aligned to achieve maximum market penetration or overcome industry efforts
to produce weaker standards and certification.
Pre-workshop
Reception
There will be a pre-workshop wine reception the evening of June
14th. The reception will be held in the lobby lounge of the Washington
Inn in Downtown Oakland (495 10th Street) from 6:00 to 7:30 PM. Drinks
and hors d'oeuvres will be served. For directions to the Washington
Inn, click
here.
After
the reception, we are planning an informal no-host dinner at a nearby
French-Vietnamese restaurant. Please contact Mari (morikawa@pacinst.org)
if you are interested, so that we can book a reservation accordingly.
|
|
|