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ISO 26000 (CSR Guidance)

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is an issue that is working its way into many policy debates and corporate agendas. CSR is an evolution in the approach towards sustainable development: while the 1992 Rio Earth Summit focused on environmental management, the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) focused on a broader set of issues, including poverty reduction and social development.

A recent survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers of 140 chief executives of U.S.-based multinational companies found that 85 per cent of them believe that sustainable development will be even more important to their business model in five years than it is today.

As many more organizations decide that they must address the principles of CSR, there is a growing need for tools to help them to define and address what CSR means and how to implement it throughout their organizations. At its General Assembly in Stockholm, Sweden, in September 2002, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) decided that the time had come to consider the value of developing management standards on CSR. This resolution recognized the value of the ISO 14001 environmental management system standard in improving the efficiency of corporate environmental management, and built on a report prepared by the ISO Consumer Policy Committee (COPOLCO) (PDF - 573 kb) on the value of CSR standards.

IISD has been invited to serve as a member of The ISO Strategic Advisory Group (SAG) on Corporate Social Responsibility The group's mandate is to discuss and to advise ISO Council on:

• whether ISO should develop standards or other documents on the subject of CSR;

• what the scope of such work should be; and

• the kind of deliverables ISO should develop.

As part of its participation in the work of the SAG on CSR, IISD has committed itself to helping other organizations get involved and become aware of the implications of ISO work in this area. In turn, we have engaged in a partnership with leading NGOs from around the world. These organizations are:

• The International Institute for Environment and Development (U.K.);

• IUCN – The World Conservation Union (Switzerland);

• Development Alternatives (India);

• Recursos e Investigación para el Desarrollo Sustentable (Chile); and the

• African Institute of Corporate Citizenship (South Africa).

Through their collaboration, this wider group is providing advisory input to IISD while working to build understanding on key issues surrounding ISO's potential entry into CSR. A key objective is for each of the partners to begin to build a debate in their own countries and among their own constituencies on the pros and cons of engagement and the substantive content of any ISO CSR standard.

There is an urgent need to widen discussion and engagement around ISO's role in CSR. Each partner recognizes a need for ISO's engagement in the agenda to be conditional on progress in a number of key areas, including:

• equitable representation of civil society from the South and the North—to include voices of community-based organizations that are often excluded from the development of CSR standards;

• equitable and effective engagement of producers based in developing countries, particularly small- and medium-sized enterprises that are so important in the economies of many low- and middle-income countries;

• that any standard should not discriminate against small producers, become a discriminatory barrier to market access or restrict innovation; and

• that a standard must be flexible in its ability to respond to the rapid pace of developments in the CSR agenda more broadly, without locking in a "status quo" that is likely to become quickly outmoded.

Together, and with the support of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA); the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID); and the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), we will be following the work of the ISO SAG on CSR closely over upcoming months.

We will produce regular summaries on the discussions in the group, including reports of the meetings, an overview of the issues being discussed and insight into what is happening in the process. These reports and selected working documents from the ISO SAG on CSR are be available here. If you would like to be notified when new briefings are posted, please contact Tom Rotherham at trotherham@iisd.ca

For those interested in joining an online discussion on ISO's work on CSR standards, please contact Webb.Kernaghan@ic.gc.ca or visit the ISO CSR Online Forum.

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