[WorldChanging]: The Global 100 is a new annual ranking of the world’s most sustainable corporations, unveiled last week at Davos.
Their definition of corporate sustainability is pretty
loose…[but]…just as governmental lip-service to ideas like the
hydrogen economy and sustainable development moves the center of the
debate towards those ideas, recognizing good corporate behavior moves
us closer to widespread acceptance of transcommercial principles. The
point isn’t that these companies are anywhere close to the
transformations we need to see. These sorts of efforts, I think, change
the debate about corporate behavior.
However, do they change corporate behavior itself?
Here’s the comment I posted there:
Alcoa _could_ be worthy of such an award, I suppose — they’ve certainly made good efforts — but as Makower points out,
there’s no way to know from this process. I’m glad to know that ‘Alcoa
has the requisite sustainability strategies in place,’ but I’d
sure like to know 1) what the awarders think those are, and 2) what
results and impacts Alcoa is producing in the world, and 3) how those
results and impacts compare with their competitors’ and/or
alternatives.
Natural Logic recently conducted an analysis, using our Business Metabolics KPI system, of the ‘leading CSR reporters’ as noted in SustainAbility’s
‘Global Reporters’ report, comparing actual performance with quality of
reporting. Quick summary: good reporting and good perfomance are not
necessarily correlated.