Portrayal of sustainability principles in the mission statements and on home pages of the world's largest organizations

Abstract

Conservation can be achieved only if sustainability is embraced as core to organizational cultures. To test the extent to which the related concepts of sustainability, conservation, response to climate change, poverty alleviation, and gender equity have been incorporated into organizational culture, we compared mission statements published from 1990 to 2000 with those published in 2014 for 150 organizations, including conservation nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), aid NGOs, government development agencies, resource extraction companies, and retailers (30 in each category). We also analyzed the 2014 home web pages of each organization. Relative to the earlier period, the frequency with which mission statements mentioned poverty alleviation, biodiversity conservation, and a range of sustainable practices increased only slightly by 2014, particularly among resource extractors and retail companies. Few organizations in any sector had embedded either climate change or gender equity into their mission statements. In addition, the proportional intensity with which any of the aspirations were expressed did not change between periods. For current home pages, conservation NGOs, resource extractors, and government agencies were significantly more likely to acknowledge the importance of matters that were not part of their core business, but few aid agencies or retail companies promoted goals beyond alleviation of crises and profit maximization, respectively. Overall, there has been some progress in recognizing poverty alleviation, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable practices, but gender equity and a determination to reduce impacts on climate change are still rarely promoted as central institutional concerns. Sustainability in general, and biodiversity conservation in particular, will not be achieved unless their importance is more widely apparent in core communication products of organizations.

The role of social license in conservation

“…Now social license is beginning to appear in conservation discourse (e.g., Garnett et al. ; Oakes et al. ).…”

“…Other industries such as forestry, aquaculture, and agriculture have begun using the term in a similar way (Edwards & Trafford 2016;Ford & Williams 2016;Moffat et al 2016). Now social license is beginning to appear in conservation discourse (e.g., Garnett et al 2015;Oakes et al 2015). At the same time, the use of social license in other sectors has been criticized (e.g., Owen & Kemp 2013) because it frames relationships with communities as more singular, binary, and tangible than is feasible or desirable (Parsons & Moffat 2014).…”

“…The term has also been used in similar ways to describe the need for conservation programs to earn support from the community. Conservation nongovernmental oganizations (NGOs) that seek broader community support for protectionist conservation activities that modify or exclude traditional land use in development contexts have been described as needing a social license (Garnett et al 2015). Now the term is migrating into the vocabulary of government-led conservation initiatives, where it is being used to describe the need for community support for conservation activities (e.g., Menz et al 2013).…”

Animal welfare, social license, and wildlife use industries

“…There is, however, less awareness of its role in wildlife management (Kendal and Ford , Darimont ). There has been some disagreement between authors as to the applicability of the term social license to wildlife fields (Kendal and Ford , Garnett et al ), but the concept is increasingly being used in contemporary human dimensions studies (Oakes et al , Garnett et al , Wanger et al ).…”

Social license as an emergent property of political interactions: response to Kendal and Ford 2017

“…We are delighted that Kendal and Ford (2017) were moved to comment on the use of the term social license with respect to conservation as we (Zander et al 2014;Garnett et al 2016Garnett et al , 2017 and others (Spies et al 2010;Hobday et al 2015;Buckley 2016;Latham et al 2017) have used it. We of course agree that social license may not always be a useful concept with which to describe the relationship between conservation and the community and that there is a need for "trusting, ongoing relationships with the .…”