Participants at the first Annual Meeting of the UN Global Compact discussed environmental and social responsibility in business.
The meeting is part of a five-day Global Compact week, which seeks to help sustainability practitioners understand the linkages between sustainability issues and advancing performance in their own organizations.
18 May 2011: Participants at the first Annual Meeting of the UN Global Compact, which took place in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 18 May 2011, discussed environmental and social responsibility in business. The meeting is part of a five-day Global Compact week, which seeks to help sustainability practitioners understand the linkages between sustainability issues and advancing performance in their own organizations.
Søren Pind, Denmark’s Minister for Development Cooperation, highlighted that the UN Global Compact is a public-private effort to advance development and growth and that “embedding the principles of the Global Compact in day-to-day business operations and building a sustainable supply chain can deliver many rewards.”
Georg Kell, Executive Director, UN Global Compact, emphasized that corporate sustainability has moved “from morality to materiality,” and stressed that the initiative’s goal is to reach 20,000 participants (from its current 6,000) by 2020.
Brice Lalonde, Executive Coordinator for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20), called for “a new industrial revolution” and expressed his hope that the UNCSD will offer a “roadmap for a green economy.” [3BL News]