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Barbut, Monique; Lugt, Cornis van der --- "Corporate Responsibility: The UNEP Experience" [2005] ELECD 214; in Tully, Stephen (ed), "Research Handbook on Corporate Legal Responsibility" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005)

Book Title: Research Handbook on Corporate Legal Responsibility

Editor(s): Tully, Stephen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781843768203

Section: Chapter 20

Section Title: Corporate Responsibility: The UNEP Experience

Author(s): Barbut, Monique; Lugt, Cornis van der

Number of pages: 23

Extract:

20 Corporate responsibility: the UNEP
experience
Monique Barbut and Cornis van der Lugt




Introduction
Since its creation in the 1970s, the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) has been working with the private sector in various ways to advance
greater environmental awareness and responsibility. In the early days more
energy was invested in putting out fires, focusing on end-of-pipe solutions
and policy approaches based on dilution and treatment downstream. Over the
years we have been learning with business and industry, going upstream with
a focus on cleaner production and ­ in more recent years ­ a focus on sustain-
able consumption and life-cycle approaches. Following more holistic
approaches also meant increasingly dealing with social challenges, based on
the integration that sustainable development requires. This also implied
taking on the growing debate on what some preferred to call `corporate social
responsibility' (CSR). The CSR debate was driven by new questions being
asked about the societal role of big companies in the aftermath of the Cold
War and unease about raising inequalities accompanying the process of glob-
alisation.
This chapter will focus on corporate environmental responsibility and the
related activities of UNEP. A few words about legalistic approaches and the
legal profession are also called for. In the CSR debate some critics have ques-
tioned the role of the legal profession and company lawyers for forcing
company decision-makers to focus more on `liability' than `responsibility',
causing many companies to follow a minimalist approach that leaves little
room for proactive leadership. At ...