AccountAbility at the Rio+20 Corporate Sustainability Forum (CSF)

The 2012 Rio+20 Corporate Sustainability Forum (CSF) commenced on June 15^th with private sector, government and non-profit participants convening to discuss poverty eradication, social equality, human rights, anti-corruption, and environmental sustainability. The forum builds on the private sector implementation of the major Rio+20 Conference themes: the green economy in the context of sustainable development poverty eradication, and building the institutional framework for sustainable development. Beginning today, business participants are meeting to bring greater scale and quality to corporate sustainability practices by sharing innovations and collaborations, and announcing new commitments around their sustainability practices.

At this Rio+20 Forum, AccountAbility is unveiling a research project in partnership with the Global Compact to explore the significance of voluntary sustainability commitments. Pfizer has committed to support the project as its first “Champion” sponsor. The project will look at specifically how companies can:

• Make the choice to commit to the Global Compact and related sustainability standards;
• Use sustainability commitments to drive performance excellence; and  
• Ensure organization-wide accountability to sustainability commitments.

This research partnership marks an exciting intersection of high-level goal setting and practical implementation of sustainability objectives. Since the overall goal of the project is enhancing corporate sustainability performance around the world, supporting the project is an excellent way to demonstrate commitment to leadership on corporate sustainability.  The results are expected to make an important contribution to assisting the UN Global Compact to achieve the goal, set by the UN Secretary-General, of growing to 20,000 participants by 2020.

For more information on this project, contact: