Global Sustainable Development:
The Corporate Responsibility
Meaningful Public Participation in Business Decisions
By Namakau Kaingu

UN Photo

Calls for sustainable development at the global level have been sounded, ringing for quite sometime now, and it is time for these words to be turned into deeds or practical action. The only way this can be effective is to continue knocking on the doors of both large and small companies, at the local and global levels, to make them realize the important role they play towards achieving sustainable development through their exercising corporate responsibility in their businesses.

There is an urgent need for world business leaders to examine themselves and their corporations’ activities to bring about positive change in all areas, taking into account the concerns and interests of shareholders, employees, customers, communities and corporate advocacy groups, because what has existed is a bias of concentrated economic power, supremacy and income inequalities, without even trying to balance it with labour inputs. This situation has contributed heavily to global poverty. As long as corporate leaders hold the economic power, they should take the first steps to remedial action. They have the finances, so they should include in their annual expenditure forecasts the provision of public funds to support challenges at workplaces for consumer rights, human rights, labour conditions, environmental impact assessments, community rights and conflict management, to ensure meaningful public participation in corporate decision-making by all affected stakeholders.

For businesses to fully achieve and exercise corporate responsibilities, Governments should put in place rules and regulations to ensure that investments are economically, environmentally and socially viable and responsible to encourage positive corporate behaviour. Both Governments and corporations should bear in mind that poverty cannot be eradicated or reduced if issues of corruption, transparency and accountability are not addressed. Corruption leads to low government revenues, more costly public investments, very low and cheap expenditure on infrastructure development/maintenance and non-adherence to laid-down national development plans, resulting in poor economic performances and increased poverty in the world.

For global sustainable development to be fully achieved for the benefit of all people, there is critical need for corporations to adhere to the following crucial issues:

• Labour: Companies and Governments should fully recognize workers and trade union representatives as key stakeholders at local, national and international levels. This is because workers and trade unions are best placed to monitor and oversee industry performances and practices, which can contribute to sustainability at the workplace, by seeking compliance with employers on issues such as protection of workers’rights and environmental protection, and by playing an important role in developing standards of good practices and creating spaces for employee access to information regarding their human rights and employment status.



• HIV/AIDS: Corporations should invest in HIV/AIDS awareness programmes as a contribution to their corporate human resource protection and development. The more personnel are lost through the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the more the corporation expends on continuous recruitment and training of new staff.




This photograph was taken when the author visited a clay mine in Calcutta, India. The parents of the children shown are mine workers who work from six in the morning for twelve hours or more. Ms. Kaingu believes the corporation that manages the mine could have done something for the children, a school or even a recreational area, instead of having them hang around the mine area all day, with girls carrying babies on their backs waiting for their mothers to feed them.

• Community: Corporations need to adopt socially responsible practices by developing close ties with the communities in which they operate and treating each other as partners, so that these communities are made to feel that they are part of the whole process. By so doing, the company will feel obliged to care and invest in the community or in the case of a mining corporation whose mineral resource is depleted, it would leave behind a sustainable economic activity after mine closure. It is not sustainable for a company to use poor people as cheap labour and reap profits without looking at their well-being and unsustainable livelihoods.



• Gender: There is a critical need for companies to recognize the role of women and children, and their contributions to economic development. Through corporate responsibility, companies can develop educational programmes for women and children to improve low-literacy levels and build the capacity of women.



• Trade: Corporations should examine the way they are contributing or participating in global trade. Markets have gone global, but does this trend include products from the poor countries? Are these countries fairly participating in the global economy, and are they benefiting from their involvement in global markets? If the answer is “no”, then the big corporations and richer countries should quickly create trade systems that will enable the poor countries to participate on fair terms in the global market, especially making sure that products from developing countries are given access to richer markets.

But this must be without putting in place conditions which would prohibit poor countries from getting their products to global markets, leaving a monopoly of products from richer countries that would benefit from the globalization process.

All in all, we know that corporate responsibility is the answer to global sustainable development, as these corporations hold the key to global finances through their businesses, which offer employment to the people of the world. We all have to take a positive part in the process.

Namakau Kaingu is Regional Chairperson of the SADC (Southern African Development Community) Women in Mining Trust, and Chief Executive Officer of Kaingu Gem Mines. She is also coordinator of the African Women in Mining Network, and is working with her mining community to construct a school, partly using local materials, for the 250 children without a school.

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