1. Part V: A Sustainable Perspective Chapter 13: Sustainability

2. Sustainability
What is the extent of firms’ responsibility for the environment?
What does sustainability mean in practice?
Chandler, Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility, 4th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2017.

3. CSR + Sustainability What is corporate social responsibility?
What is sustainability?
What is the difference between the two?
Chandler, Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility, 4th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2017.

4. Sustainable Development
CSR is a view of the corporation and its role in society that assumes a responsibility among firms to pursue the interests of stakeholders, broadly defined, and a responsibility among the firm’s stakeholders to hold the firm to account for its actions.
“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
—The Brundtland Report, April 1987
Chandler, Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility, 4th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2017.

5. COP21 (?)
The United States has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions “26%–28% below 2005 levels by 2025.”
The EU has committed to reductions in emissions “40% below levels by 2030.”
Mexico “has put in place the strongest climate legislation of any developing country, % below the current trend line by 2030.”
China “has promised by 2030 to reduce its carbon-dioxide emissions, per unit of GDP, to at least 60% below 2005.”
Chandler, Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility, 4th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2017.

6. Climate Change
Chandler, Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility, 4th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2017.

7. Climate Change
Chandler, Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility, 4th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2017.

8. Resilience Resilience is a means to:
“. . . help vulnerable people, organizations and systems persist, perhaps even thrive, amid unforeseeable disruptions. Where sustainability aims to put the world back into balance, resilience looks for ways to manage in an imbalanced world.”
Chandler, Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility, 4th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2017.

9. Four Reasons for Firms to Care About Sustainability
Climate change: Climate change is real. For-profit firms are both the main cause of this problem and the main hope for a solution. Our planet will be destroyed unless firms alter their operating practices.
Resilience: A changing climate will affect business operations. Managing risk and adapting to the new environment will increasingly be an aspect of business success.
Natural capital: Acting proactively on an important social issue is a rational argument for CSR. It is in firms’ best interests to act before they are forced to do so.
Stakeholders: As the need to act becomes apparent, stakeholders will increasingly demand change. Those firms that move first will be best placed to succeed in a more environmentally aware world.
Chandler, Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility, 4th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2017.

10. Waste Waste is a central driver of the global economy:
For firms, the more you buy of their products, the better they perform and the faster the economy grows. In other words, mass consumption and quick turnover are essential. Whether we need a product is less important than whether we want it. And, if we buy a product, the quicker we throw it away and buy another one, the faster GDP rises. ***Restraint and conservation are not the point.***
Chandler, Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility, 4th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2017.

11. e-Waste
According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s latest figures (2010), in the United States:
142,000 computers and over 416,000 mobile devices are thrown away every day.
In total, 2.4 million tons (384 million units) of e-waste are discarded annually.
Only 27% (of total weight) and 19% (of total units) of e-waste are recycled.
Chandler, Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility, 4th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2017.

12. e-Waste
Chandler, Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility, 4th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2017.

13. Beyond Sustainability
Strategic CSR argues for system-wide change fueled by the value-creating capacity of for-profit firms. It recognizes that the status quo is unstable, but it also recognizes the power of the market to innovate and overcome the most intractable human problems.
In short, we need a comprehensive reassessment of our capitalist model, but one in which we retain what is most effective about market forces to mobilize and allocate valuable and scarce resources in ways that optimize total value.
Chandler, Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility, 4th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2017.