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Darwinian selection - the “survival of the fittest” concept - is as applicable to human social structures as it is to the natural world. The question just becomes “Fit for what?”. Whereas wild nature’s “fitness” is defined by the ability to compete successfully in the struggle for food, habitat and reproductive rights, “fitness” in human social structures depends on goals that vary from one structure to another.
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The owners and directors of corporations must be made accountable in law for their actions. Owner-shareholders and top executives exercise immense power, both globally and locally, but are not responsible in law for their actions. This immunity is provided by the legal principle of limited liability.
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Before his untimely death in a plane crash, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown said,
“I’m not Hillary’s mother-f****** tour guide!”
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She was expected to work 360 days a year from 7.30am to 9.30pm with only a half-hour break
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Somewhere out there, in the dusty basements of the Chevron-Texaco corporate headquarters, there is a technology that can - in one swoop - slash global warming emissions, save millions of people from respiratory illnesses, and stop us trashing the Middle East to seize its oil. Yet it is being deliberately left to rot, in the hope we will all forget about it.This sounds like the plot to a bad retro-episode of the X-Files, but an award-winning documentary released this week on DVD in Britain reminds us this technology is real and it is still there, waiting to save us. The film is called ‘Who Killed the Electric Car?‘
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26th March 07 - Save The Children Companies who are not adhering to corporate social responsibility codes are failing millions of children, says a new report published today.
The report, Why Corporate Social Responsibility is Failing Children, by Save the Children and The Corporate Responsibility (CORE) Coalition, reviews three voluntary codes for companies and reveals that all three have been violated by leading companies. The report concludes that voluntary initiatives alone are wholly inadequate as a means of improving the lives of children. This is because they fail to be enforced and because they attract only a small sub-section of companies in each sector.
The codes outlined in the report are the International Code on Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes, the Extractive Industries Transparencies Initiative (EITI) and the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI).
In relation to these three codes, the report reveals: - The Breastmilk Code: 25 years on from the adoption of the International Code on Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes, almost 1.4 million children are dying every year because they haven’t been adequately breastfed. Aggressive marketing of breast milk substitutes is still common throughout the world and there is substantial evidence linking corporate promotional activities to reduced breast feeding worldwide.
- Extractive Industries Transparencies Initiative (EITI): The EITI was introduced in 2002 to improve transparency in the oil, gas and mining sectors. Funds from these sectors are often used to fuel conflict and exacerbate poverty resulting in damaging impacts on children’s lives. Five years on, almost none of the relevant companies are fully transparent about their payments to repressive regimes. This has been linked to the resource curse and the continued death and displacement of over 20 million people.
- ETI: The ETI is supposed to protect the rights of workers. However an evaluation has shown that adherence to the code has been slow and that key aspects of the code, such as paying a living wage, or protecting worker’s rights to freedom of association, are entirely ignored. The ILO reports that there are 218 million working children aged 5-17 around the world. About 5% of these, or 12.3 million children, are employed directly in export industries that support multinational companies.
Alison Holder, Private Sector Adviser at Save the Children, said: “If the Government doesn’t enforce these essential codes, companies will continue to think about the bottom line before their social and environmental impact on the lives of children. We know that children around the world could be saved if companies were more accountable for their actions and governments have a role to play in ensuring enforceable rules are laid out. It’s time both companies and governments got their priorities straight.” Deborah Doane, Director of the Corporate Responsibility (CORE) Coalition added: “The Corporate Responsibility Coalition has been campaigning for some time that voluntary initiatives on corporate responsibility are not working. Our report examines three very different issues: oil, gas and mining, baby milk and child labour. The conclusions are clear - voluntary initiatives and codes only go so far. UK companies must be more accountable and transparent in law.” Save the Children and The Corporate Responsibility (CORE) Coalition are calling for: - Enforcement of all codes in order to penalise companies who have signed up to the codes but failed to meet their aims.
- Governments to promote laws that underpin codes of conduct at national level, for example through labour laws or transparency laws.
- Company law to place responsibility on companies to act to the highest standards wherever they operate in the world.
- Governments and companies to support and implement international measures that can reinforce codes of conduct, such as the UN Human Rights Norms for Business and the OECD guidelines on Multinational Enterprise.
Ends - For more information please contact: Save the Children Press Office: +44 (0)207 012 6841 or out of hours: 07831 650 409 Email address:
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Notes to Editors- To receive a PDF copy of the report, please contact Sophie Elmhirst on 020 7012 6403,
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- The co-authors of the report are Alison Holder, Private Sector Adviser of Save the Children and Deborah Doane, Director of The Corporate Responsibility (CORE) Coalition.
- For further information on the contents of the report please contact Deborah (tel: 0207 732 3971; mobile: 07786 556251) or Alison (tel: 0207 012 6701; mobile: 07894 254896).
- Jasmine Whitbread, chief executive of Save the Children, will be speaking at a Chatham House event on corporate social responsibility next week.
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 26th March 07 - Jennifer Washburn, LA TimesOn Feb 1, the oil giant BP announced that it had chosen UC Berkeley, in partnership with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to lead the largest academic-industrial research alliance in U.S. history. If the deal is approved, BP will give $500 million over 10 years to fund a new multidisciplinary Energy Biosciences Institute devoted principally to biofuels research.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, UC administrators and BP executives immediately proclaimed the alliance — which is not yet a done deal — a victory for higher education and for the environment. But here's another way to see it. For a mere $50 million a year, an oil company worth $250 billion would buy a chunk of America's premier public research institutions, all but turning them into its own profit-making subsidiary. |
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