United Nations Releases Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights
Susan Baker Good news came out of the United Nations this summer that has positive implications for shareholder advocates and activists working to promote and protect human rights. The UN Human Rights Council (formerly the UN Commission on Human Rights) endorsed the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework.[1] Six years in the making, the Guiding Principles are the first set of standards ever endorsed by the UN that examine the intersection of business and human rights. Unlike the UN Global Compact, a set of voluntary business principles introduced in 2000 …
Economic Impact of Japanese Earthquake Will Be Felt For Some Time
Cheryl Smith, Ph.D., CFA As we watched the awesome power and devastation of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, our attention bounced between concern for the more than 18,000 people either dead or missing, horrified fascination with the evolving control issues at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and concern about the eventual impact on the Japanese and world economies. The appalling immediate and local impact of the tsunami was obvious from the photos and news coverage. Recovery is further complicated by the deteriorating and unknown final status of the nuclear power plant. The economic effect of natural disasters varies with …
Upheaval in Global Automotive Industry: What Car Are you Driving?
Everyone remembers his or her first car. Mine was the 1951 Raymond Loewy-designed Studebaker Champion. My father was also a Studebaker owner. The 1951 model was a big hit with designers, and it had respectable, if not sensational, sales. But the company went out of business in 1963 when it closed down its factory in South Bend, Indiana. In the 1950s, I began driving Fords. I am not sure why. They were always breaking down. At the same time I began following the entry of foreign cars into the United Sates as a reporter for Advertising Age. It was just …
Investor Pressure Moves Toyota Affiliate to Divest from Joint Venture with Burmese Regime
Trillium Asset Management, along with Domini Social Investments and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, issued a press release today commending Toyota Motors for influencing their affiliate Toyota Tsusho (TTC) on the divestment of their ownership stake in Myanmar Suzuki Motor. The vehicle assembly plant was jointly controlled by the Burmese military regime. Trillium has been in dialogue with Toyota since 2007 on this issue. Click here to read the press release. Click here to read a news article from Reuters. …
The Smart Grid Brings Smart Tips for Energy Use
Knowledge is power? Not according to Google and Microsoft. These firms and many others have recently rolled out energy efficiency tools designed for consumers to use on the emerging smart grid. The hope is that knowledge will bring less power, fewer blackouts and reduced carbon emissions. Investors are beginning to sit up and take notice of smart grid technologies, especially since the Obama Administration’s stimulus plan directed over $4 billion to the young industry. There’s been much talk about how a smart grid can reshape the utility industry, but smart grid technology also will bring about changes for you and …
2008 Advocacy Review
For our 2008 advocacy efforts, we’re pleased to report a fair amount of progress — never as much as we’d like (we’d like superhero powers), but enough to confirm that shareholder activism remains a potent tool for change. Climate change. Our shareholder resolution at ConocoPhillips requesting a report on the environmental and social impacts of tar sands drilling won almost 28% of the vote, an impressive vote in this arena. Our resolution at Bank of America addressing its financing of coal-fired power plants and mountaintop coal removal was deemed inadmissible by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), but we eventually …
Toyota Backpedals on Burma
If the Prius left you with a warm and fuzzy feeling for Toyota, you’re not alone. Noting that Toyota “has been a leader in both developing and promoting hybrid power-trains, the new industry standard, and is well advanced in overall R&D programs for future vehicle types,” the corporate responsibility research firm Innovest chose the company as the sole automotive representative in its top 100 most sustainable global companies in August 2007. We’re in agreement that Toyota deserves accolades for implementing sustainable business strategies that have led to the successful launch of hybrid fuel technology. But – and you sensed this …
From the President
One of the most amazing days of my professional life was the day more than a decade ago that I spent as keynote speaker for a conference of the people in charge of General Motors’ environmental policies and procedures in plants around North America. There were hundreds of them, many of whom had Ph.D.’s. They were very interested and supportive when faced with an unedited speaker advocating stronger environmental policies and complete disclosure of results. On another day, a visit with the General Motors’ crash test dummies, watching steering wheel columns hurtle into the surrogate humans in car seats at …
Uncovering Slavery in Steel
How far up a supply chain should a company be held accountable? In Carajas in Brazil’s eastern Amazon region, work is scarce and poverty and lawlessness are widespread. Opportunistic hacienda owners lure the desperate and unemployed to distant charcoal camps with promises of work, wages and shelter. Once at the camp, the owners levy illegal charges on the workers for transportation, equipment, lodging and food. Mario Osava, reporting for Inter Press Service last July described the debt as “pretext to keep laborers on the camp under threat and often under armed guard.” Deep in debt, workers succumb to involuntary servitude, …
ExxonMobil – Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction (2008)
WHEREAS The International Energy Agency warned in its 2007 World Energy Outlook that “urgent action is needed if greenhouse gas [GHG] concentrations are to be stabilized at a level that would prevent dangerous interference with the climate system.” ExxonMobil operates in countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, obliging them to reduce GHG emissions below 1990 levels by 2012. Yet Kyoto targets may be inadequate to avert the most serious impacts of global warming. Dozens of companies, including competitors ConocoPhillips, BP America, and Shell, have endorsed calls for the US to reduce carbon emissions by 60-80% by 2050. 150 global …
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