EPA - Ireland's Environment 2016 - An Assessment

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155 Chapter 9: Environment and the Economy
standards and agreements. However, at the core of the
circular economy paradigm is consumption, and the
State can, working through its citizens and value systems,
educate and promote a reimagining and realisation
of what sustainable consumption should be. What it
should not be is the vulgar conspicious and inefficient
consumption we have seen in the past.
Emerging Environmental Governance
trends
There has been a rapid expansion of business-led, and
government-fostered, sustainability programming.
The last few years has seen a significant growth of
business and municipality led environmental governance
initiatives, that involve the voluntary making of
environmental commitments and reporting of progress.
Initiatives include such schemes as ISO Standards, green
accounting and green investments, carbon disclosure, etc.,
which here we will cluster as corporate social responsibility
(CSR) programmes. Many of these programmes were
originally intended to be carried out at a multinational
level, but more recently appear throughout the value
chain, and many civil society groups, municipalities
and large cities are also getting involved. It is not a
new idea, but it might be one whose time has come
as a result of a convergence of social, marketplace and
governance expectations. Corporate social responsibility
is a concept whereby enterprises integrate their social
and environmental responsibilities into their mainstream
business operations, and business decisions are made with
reference to wider sustainability issues. This is a rapidly
expanding area of business-led, and government-fostered,
sustainability programming, and needs, over the coming
years, to expand from the sphere of multinationals to the
wider business and public service community.
The UN Global Compact9 is a call to companies
to align strategies and operations with universal
principles on environmental protection, along with
wider human rights, labour issues, etc., and take
actions that advance societal goals. It involves over
8,000 companies operating in over 160 countries
worldwide. Twenty-two businesses are registered
under Ireland, and have submitted pledges. These
companies operate in a variety of fields including
services, distribution, engineering, academic and
manufacturing. It is a voluntary initiative based
on company commitments to implement universal
sustainability principles and to take steps to support
UN goals. Further supporting resources are available
on the World Business Council for Sustainable
Development website.10
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In 2013, the EU adopted a proposal for a Directive on
Non‑Financial Reporting,11 which aims to have large
companies report CSR-type metrics on an annual basis. The
UN-fostered and multinational-supported Global Reporting
Initiative (GRI)12 helps companies to be transparent about
their sustainability goals, performance and impacts. Its
Sustainability Reporting Guidelines (known as G4)13 are the
most widely used comprehensive sustainability reporting
standards in the world; there are currently over 23,000
reports recorded in the GRI database, and this number is
still growing. Transparent sustainability reporting is a key
element of CSR.
The recent Climate Change Council of the Parties meeting
in Paris involved a large group of companies, cities,
regions, civil society organisations and investors which
have made non-regulatory-demanded climate change-
related pledges collectively known as the UN‑moderated
Climate Action Agenda NAZCA pledges.14 These
coalitions of actors are intended to accelerate activity to
deliver the necessary systemic changes. This follows the
commencement of the non-state sector pledge platform
at the Council of the Parties meeting in Lima in 2014,
and, to date, the programme includes over 11,000
pledges. Only a limited number of Irish organisations have
registered pledges so far.
Ireland’s National Plan for Corporate
Social Responsibility 2014‑2016
Promoting environmental practices that enhance a
company’s profile and competitiveness.
Ireland’s National Plan for Corporate Social Responsibility
2014‑2016 is a very significant government policy
intervention (DJEI, 2014). The policy observes that CSR
practices that are embedded as a genuine part of a
company’s values and operations can help enhance the
company’s profile and competitiveness; CSR is good
for business and good for the community. The national
policy presents a model of five CSR pillars, with each
pillar including a number of elements of activity/action
(Figure 9.6), and establishes five key objectives for
the National Plan. There are good examples and more
information of business-led CSR activities in Ireland on the
Business in the Community website.15
CSR goes beyond mere compliance with legislation to
promoting mutually supported shared value-resilient
businesses and resilient communities.
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