Corporate accountability in South Africa: The role of community mobilizing in environmental governance

International Affairs

Volumn 81, Issue 3, 2005, Pages

  Lund Thomsen, Peter ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 19544389613     PISSN: 00205850     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2346.2005.00472.x     Document Type: Article

References (61)

1. I use 'corporate responsibility' as an umbrella term that covers both corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate accountability approaches.
2. These writings cover various topics such as ethical trade, the benefits and limitations of voluntary codes, the issue of foreign direct liability, and problems associated with corporate self-regulation and community-based accountability strategies. See e.g. Michael E. Blowfield, 'Ethical supply chains in the cocoa, coffee and tea industries', Greener Management International 43, Autumn 2004, pp. 15-24;
3. Rhys Jenkins et al., eds, Corporate responsibility and labour rights: codes of conduct in a global economy (London: Earthscan, 2002);
4. Halina Ward, Legal issues in corporate citizenship, report prepared for the Swedish Partnership for Corporate Social Responsibility (London: International Institute for Environment and Development, 2003);
5. Niamh Garvey and Peter Newell, Corporate accountability to the poor: assessing the effectiveness of community-based strategies, Institute of Development Studies (IDS) Working Paper 227 (Brighton: IDS, 2004).
6. Peter Newell, 'Citizenship, accountability, and community: the limits of the CSR agenda', International Affairs 81: 3, May 2005.
7. Michael Blowfield, 'CSR: reinventing the meaning of development?', International Affairs 81:3, May 2005.
8. Ralph Hamann et al., 'Responsibility vs. accountability? Interpreting the World Summit on Sustainable Development for a synthesis model of corporate citizenship', journal of Corporate Citizenship 9, 2003, pp. 32-48.
9. Whereas business lobbies have been playing a central role in the promotion of CSR initiatives, it should be noted that some NGOs, intergovernmental organizations and governments have also been supporting the idea of business voluntarily contributing towards the solution of environmental and social problems.
10. Nicola Acutt, 'Voluntary environmental initiatives: case studies in the South Durban petrochemical industry, South Africa', paper presented at Oikos PhD Summer Academy 2002, 'Sustainability, corporations, and institutional arrangements', St Gallen, Switzerland.
11. Acutt, 'Voluntary environmental initiatives'.
12. Groundwork press release, 'Statement by Groundwork and the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance on the release of the south Durban "Pipeline Integrity Report'" (Pietermaritzburg: Groundwork, 11 Oct. 2004).
13. Chris Albertyn and Gillian Watkins, Partners in pollution: voluntary agreements and corporate greenwash, South African People and Environment in the Global Market Series (Pietermaritzburg: Groundwork, 2002).
14. Peter Lund-Thomsen, 'Capacity development, environmental justice NGOs, and governance: the case of South Africa', PhD thesis (Copenhagen: Department of Intercultural Communication and Management, Copenhagen Business School, Jan. 2005).
15. An initiative that goes beyond what companies are legally required to do.
16. Nicola Acutt, Perspectives on corporate responsibility: the South African experience with voluntary initiatives, CSERGE Working Paper ECM 03-05, Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Environment (Norwich: University of East Anglia, 2003). According to Acutt, significant challenges remained in relation to participation, access to information, and independent reporting on social and environmental impacts affecting communities in south Durban.
17. Joan Martinez-Alier, The environmentalism of the poor: a study of ecological conflicts and valuation (Northampton: Edward Elgar, 2002).
18. Martinez-Alier, The environmentalism of the poor.
19. Michael Blowfield and Jedrzej George Frynas, 'Setting new agendas: critical perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility in the developing world', International Affairs 81: 3, May 2005, pp. 499-514.
20. Albertyn and Watkins, Partners in pollution.
21. Acutt, Perspectives on corporate responsibility.
22. Jenkins et al., Corporate responsibility and labour rights.
23. Acutt, Perspectives on corporate responsibility.
24. Acutt, Perspectives on corporate responsibility.
25. Albertyn and Watkins, Partners in pollution.
26. Richard Boele, Heike Fabig and David Wheeler, 'Shell, Nigeria and the Ogoni. A study in unsustainable development, II: Corporate social responsibility and the "stakeholder management" approach to sustainable development', Sustainable Development 9: 3, 2001, pp. 121-35.
27. Valerie Percival and Thomas Homer-Dixon, 'Environmental scarcity and violent conflict: the case of South Africa', Journal of Peace Research 35: 3, 1998, pp. 279-98.
28. Mamphela Ramphele and Chris McDowell, Restoring the land: environment and change in post-apartheid South Africa (London: Panos, 1991), pp. 2-4.
29. Jo Beall, Owen Crankshaw and Susan Parnell, 'Victims, villains and fixers: the urban environment and Johannesburg's poor', Journal of Southern African Studies 26: 4, 2000, pp. 833-55.
30. David McDonald, 'Neither from above, nor from below: municipal bureaucrats and environmental policy in Cape Town, South Africa', Canadian Journal of African Studies 30: 2, 1997, pp. 315-40.
31. Beall et al., 'Victims, villains and fixers'.
32. David Fig et al., 'A political economy of corporate social and environmental responsibility in South Africa', paper presented to a workshop at the Copenhagen Business School, 3-5 Nov. 2003 (Johannesburg: Sociology of Work Unit, University of the Witwatersrand, 2003).
33. Albertyn and Watkins, Partners in pollution, p. 5.
34. Albertyn and Watkins, Partners in pollution, pp. 5-6.
35. Albertyn and Watkins, Partners in pollution, p. 15.
36. David Fig and Jacklyn Cock, 'The impact of globalisation on environmental politics in South Africa, 1990-2002', African Sociological Review 5: 2, 2002, pp. 15-35.
37. Ran Greenstein, State, civil society, and the reconfiguration of power in post-apartheid South Africa (Durban: Centre for Civil Society, 2003).
38. Patrick Bond, 'Foreign aid and development debates in post-apartheid South Africa: development debates have largely raged around state policy, the RDP and GEAR', Transformation 45, 2001, pp. 25-36. 'Global apartheid' is a term frequently used in South African debates on North-South equalities. Inspired by South Africa's past, it tends not to be very well defined.
39. The extent to which user charges for goods and services recover the full costs of providing such services.
40. Hermien Kotzé, Responding to the growing socio-economic crisis? A review of civil society in South Africa during 2001 and 2002, Centre for Civil Society Research Report no. 19 (Durban: Centre for Civil Society, 2004).
41. Peter Newell, 'Environmental NGOs and globalization: the governance of TNCs', in Robin Cohen and Shirin M. Rai, eds, Global social movements (London: Athlone, 2000), pp. 117-34.
42. This information stems from the completion report of a joint DN-SDCEA cooperation project. The report was submitted to the Danish aid agency Danida in December 2003.
43. Engen press release, 'Danish report on South African refineries will mislead public', 7 March 2003.
44. SAPREF is a joint venture between the energy multinationals Shell SA Energy and BP Southern Africa.
45. Tony Carnie, 'Refining two standards', Sunday Tribune, 16 March 2003.
46. Robert O'Brien. Anne Marie Goetz, Jan Aart Scholte and Marc Williams, Contesting global governance: multilateral economic institutions and global social movements (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 14.
47. Boele et al., 'Shell, Nigeria and the Ogoni'.
48. Lund-Thomsen, 'Capacity development, environmental justice NGOs, and governance'. The CNEPP was a multi-stakeholder environmental policy process undertaken between 1995 and 1997 to elaborate South Africa's new environmental governance framework.
49. Fig and Cock, 'The impact of globalisation on environmental politics in South Africa'.
50. Garvey and Newell, Corporate accountability to the poor.
51. Garvey and Newell, Corporate accountability to the poor.
52. Lund-Thomsen, 'Capacity development, environmental justice NGOs, and governance'.
53. Alnoor Ebrahim, 'Accountability in practice: mechanisms for NGOs', World Development 31:5, 2003, pp. 813-29.
54. Lund-Thomsen, 'Capacity development, environmental justice NGOs, and governance'.
55. Lund-Thomsen, 'Capacity development, environmental justice NGOs, and governance'.
56. Peter Newell, 'Access to environmental justice? Litigation against TNCs in the South', IDS Bulletin 32: 1, 2001, pp. 83-94.
57. Darryll Reed, 'Resource extraction industries in developing countries', Journal of Business Ethics 39: 3, 2002, pp. 199-226.
58. Boele et al., 'Shell, Nigeria and the Ogoni'.
59. David Szablowski, 'Mining, displacement and the World Bank: a case analysis of Compania Minera Antamina's operations in Peru', Journal of Business Ethics 39: 3, 2002, pp. 247-73.
60. Paul Kapelus, 'Mining, corporate social responsibility and the "community": the case of Rio Tinto, Richards Bay Minerals and the Mbonambi' Journal of Business Ethics 39: 3, 2002, pp. 275-96.
61. It could of course be argued that CSR approaches are a response to the incentives created by corporate accountability strategies. For example, a company may choose to improve its environmental performance as a way of deflecting demands for stricter regulation of its production processes.