From Corporate Social Responsibility to Accountability Mechanisms: The Role of the Convention on Biological Diversity

Abstract

This paper traces the progressive shift at the international level from purely voluntary approaches (corporate social responsibility or CSR) towards accountability mechanisms to ensure the environmentally sound conduct of private entities. It examines whether the most recent international discussion on human rights and corporate accountability have adequately considered environmental protection concerns. It then concentrates on the growing number of international oversight mechanisms that provide a readily-available and impartial avenue for addressing complaints against private companies for their negative environmental impacts. The paper concludes that certain key standards elaborated within the framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity, in particular environmental-cultural impact assessments and benefit-sharing, are increasingly referred to in the decisions of different international corporate accountability mechanisms to ensure both the protection of the environment and of human rights.

Biodiversity Offsets: Incentivizing Conservation for Managing Business Impacts

“…The reputational benefits could include maintaining regulatory goodwill and demonstrating responsible company performance to investors and other stakeholders for long-term business prospects. These visible drivers of offset schemes have driven business groups to frame specific and quantified environmental goals for managing corporate impacts on the environment (IAIA, 2005; BBOP, 2012a; ICMM-IUCN, 2012; IFC, 2012; Morgera, 2012; Rainey et al, 2014).…”

Integrating corporate social responsibility into conservation policy. The example of business commitments to contribute to the French National Biodiversity Strategy

“…Disclosure on biodiversity issues in CSR reporting has also significantly increased these last years (Adler et al, 2017). A multiplicity of international standard-settings and monitoring mechanisms have been developed in line with the framework provided by the CBD (Morgera, 2012), along with new assessment tools (Wolff et al, 2017a). While this gain of visibility may have led firms to put biodiversity higher on their political agenda, whether this translates into concrete efforts to reduce biodiversity loss still needs to be investigated.…”

A review of corporate goals of No Net Loss and Net Positive Impact on biodiversity

“…Corporate environmental goals have been encouraged by the International Finance Corporation Performance Standard 6 (IFC, 2012), which is one of the most influential environmental safeguards in finance (Morgera, 2012). The latest Standard requires private sector projects that receive investment to achieve no net loss of biodiversity in areas of natural habitat, where feasible, and net gains of biodiversity for which 'critical habitat' is designated (IFC, 2012).…”

“…The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro stimulated major interest in the concept of sustainable development, and the Convention on Biological Diversity has subsequently played a key role in framing standards for corporate environmental accountability (Morgera, 2012). A free market reacts most swiftly, however, to clear financial incentives.…”