The Impact of Ruggie’s Guiding Principles for Human Rights?

By Sabrina Basran

The world is no stranger to human rights abuses committed by companies – Union Carbide (taken over by Dow Chemical) in India in the 1980s; Shell in the Niger Delta; Nike and sweatshop labour in Vietnam the 1990s; Trafigura dumping toxic waste in Côte d'Ivoire in the 2000s; and Vedanta Resources in India today – these are a few among many examples.

In March 2011 John Ruggie, then Special Representative of the UN Secretary General (SRSG) submitted his final report for consideration by the UN Human Rights Council. The report set out Ruggie’s Guiding Principles for implementing a ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ framework for human rights. The Council officially endorsed the Principles in June 2011. They were six years in the making.

Ruggie’s Framework rests on three pillars:

• The state duty to protect human rights
• The corporate responsibility to respect human rights; and
• Access to remedy (provided largely by states, but also by corporates).

A year on, what impact has Ruggie’s Framework (particularly the second pillar) had on business behaviour? Not much. Beyond a stated commitment to the Guiding Principles in a few CSR reports and Code of Ethics, there has been a conspicuous lack of activity by companies in implementing the Framework. This is not to say there has been none, but examples are few and far between. One of the difficulties with such voluntary guidance is there is no body to take ‘ownership’ once it is complete. As such, it tends to ‘drift’ and have little success in effecting genuine change.

This is perhaps why the EC announced earlier this year that it is developing guidance to support Ruggie’s second pillar, in conjunction with the Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB) and Shift. We will have to ‘watch this space’. Meanwhile, there is evidence of some change. Recent cases of corporate human rights abuses highlight that there is another ‘player’ in the human rights game besides states, business and regulatory bodies – the general public.

A case in point is Apple, which, in February 2012, admitted it had a human rights problem and agreed to investigate working conditions in its supply chain. The decision was partly due to growing pressure from consumers and the general public, including calls to boycott Apple products. This was especially the case in China, where one of Apple’s suppliers, Foxconn, had experienced a spate of suicides at its factories since 2009.

Another example is Hershey’s. After more than 100,000 consumers lobbied Hershey’s online as part of the ‘Raise the bar, Hershey!’ Coalition, the company agreed in March to buy Rainforest Alliance certified cocoa. The Coalition began in response to forced and child labour problems in Hershey’s supply chain.

These examples raise important questions around the role of guidance and regulation as drivers of corporate responsibility for human rights. The shift of power from state governments to multinational corporations suggests that we need a shift in thinking on human rights and how to effect positive change and progress. Is guidance sufficient? Does it place enough ‘pressure’ on companies? Does it really drive change in business behaviour? Compared to issues around corporate social responsibility, sustainability and ethics, human rights have long been the focus of regulatory bodies such as the UN. Yet, whilst there has been a definite shift in business attitudes towards these issues, companies have been reluctant to take much action.

This suggests regulation and guidance are not the best way forward. Where there has been company action this has been partly in response to public pressure. Ultimately, companies are pragmatic; they care about their future. If society is pushing for change, business will generally (albeit sometimes rather slowly), respond. This is increasingly the case as business realises the power of societal pressure to influence corporate reputation - and so the bottom line.

References

1. Report of the Special Representative of the Secretary General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, John Ruggie, ‘Guiding principles on business and human rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework’, 21^st March 2011.
2. Institute for human rights and business press release, 13^th January 2012. See: http://www.ihrb.org/news/2012/new_project_to_develop_business_and_human_rights_guides_for_three_european_business_sectors.html
3. Ethical performance, ‘Foxconn factory first in Apple’s supplier labour practices review’, March 2012.
4. The Independent, ‘Apple admits it has a human rights problem’, 14^th February 2012. See: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/apple-admits-it-has-a-human-rights-problem-6898617.html
5. http://www.raisethebarhershey.org/

CSR 2.0 as a New DNA for Business

By Wayne Visser

Part 6 of 13 in Wayne Visser's Age of Responsibility Blog Series for 3BL Media.

By May 2008, it was clear to me that the evolutionary concept of Web 2.0 held many lessons for CSR, and I began to develop my thinking around CSR 2.0. It quickly became clear, however, that a metaphor can only take you so far. What was needed was a set of principles against which we could test CSR. These went through a few iterations, but I eventually settled on five, which form a kind of mnemonic for CSR 2.0: Creativity (C), Scalability (S), Responsiveness (R), Glocality (2) and Circularity (0). These principles, which will be explored in detail in the next blog posts, can be described briefly as follows:

Creativity – The problem with the current obsession with CSR codes and standards (including the new ISO 26000 standard) is that it encourages a tick-box approach to CSR. But our social and environmental problems are complex and intractable. They need creative solutions, like Free-play’s wind-up technology or Vodafone’s M-Pesa money transfer scheme.

Scalability – The CSR literature is liberally sprinkled with charming case studies of truly responsible and sustainable projects. The problem is that so few of them ever go to scale. We need more examples like Wal-Mart ‘choice editing’ by converting to organic cotton, Tata creating the affordable eco-efficient Nano car or Muhammad Yunus’s Grameen microfinance model.

Responsiveness – More cross-sector partnerships and stakeholder-driven approaches are needed at every level, as well as more uncomfortable, transformative responsiveness, which questions whether particular industries, or the business model itself, are part of the solution or part of the problem. A good example of responsiveness is the Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change.

Glocality – This means ‘think global, act local’. In a complex, interconnected, globalising world, companies (and their critics) will have to become far more sophisticated in combining international norms with local contexts, finding local solutions that are culturally appropriate, without forsaking universal principles. We are moving from an ‘either-or’ one-size-fits-all world to a ‘both-and’ strength-in-diversity world.

Circularity – Our global economic and commercial system is based on a fundamentally flawed design, which acts as if there are no limits on resource consumption or waste disposal. Instead, we need a cradle-to-cradle approach, closing the loop on production and designing products and processes to be inherently ‘good’, rather than ‘less bad’, as Shaw Carpets does.

I believe that CSR 2.0 – or Systemic CSR (I also sometimes call it Radical CSR or Holistic CSR, so use whichever you prefer) – represents a new model of CSR. In one sense, it is not so different from other models we have seen before. We can recognise echoes of Archie Carroll’s CSR Pyramid, Ed Freeman’s Stakeholder Theory, Donna Wood’s Corporate Social Performance, John Elkington’s Triple Bottom Line, Stuart Hart and C.K. Prahalad’s Bottom of the Pyramid, Michael Porter’s Strategic CSR and the ESG approach of Socially Responsible Investment, to mention but a few. But that is really the point – it integrates what we have learned to date. It presents a holistic model of CSR.

The essence of the CSR 2.0 DNA model are the four DNA Responsibility Bases, which are like the four nitrogenous bases of biological DNA (adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine), sometimes abbreviated to the four-letters GCTA (which was the inspiration for the 1997 science fiction film GATTACA). In the case of CSR 2.0, the DNA Responsibility Bases are Value creation, Good governance, Societal contribution and Environmental integrity, or VEGS if you like. Each DNA Base has a primary goal and each goal has key indicators.

Hence, if we look at Value Creation, it is clear we are talking about more than financial profitability. The goal is economic development, which means not only contributing to the enrichment of shareholders and executives, but improving the economic context in which a company operates, including investing in infrastructure, creating jobs, providing skills development and so on. There can be any number of KPIs, but I want to highlight two that I believe are essential: beneficial products and inclusive business. Does the company’s products and services really improve our quality of life, or do they cause harm or add to the low-quality junk of what Charles Handy calls the ‘chindogu society’. And how are the economic benefits shared? Does wealth trickle up or down; are employees, SMEs in the supply chain and poor communities genuinely empowered?

Good Governance is another area that is not new, but in my view has failed to be properly recognised or integrated in CSR circles. The goal of institutional effectiveness is as important as more lofty social and environmental ideals. After all, if the institution fails, or is not transparent and fair, this undermines everything else that CSR is trying to accomplish. Trends in reporting, but also other forms of transparency like social media and brand- or product-linked public databases of CSR performance, will be increasingly important indicators of success, alongside embedding ethical conduct in the culture of companies. Tools like Goodguide, KPMG’s Integrity Thermometer and Covalence’s EthicalQuote ranking will become more prevalent.

Societal Contribution is an area that CSR is traditionally more used to addressing, with its goal of stakeholder orientation. This gives philanthropy its rightful place in CSR – as one tile in a larger mosaic – while also providing a spotlight for the importance of fair labour practices. It is simply unacceptable that there are more people in slavery today than there were before it was officially abolished in the 1800s, just as regular exposures of high-brand companies for the use of child-labour are despicable. This area of stakeholder engagement, community participation and supply chain integrity remains one of the most vexing and critical elements of CSR.

Finally, Environmental Integrity sets the bar way higher than minimising damage and rather aims at maintaining and improving ecosystem sustainability. The KPIs give some sense of the ambition required here – 100% renewable energy and zero waste. We cannot continue the same practices that have, according to WWF’s Living Planet Index, caused us to lose a third of the biodiversity on the planet since they began monitoring 1970. Nor can we continue to gamble with prospect of dangerous – and perhaps catastrophic and irreversible – climate change.

In this blog series, I will explore what a different approach – CSR 2.0 – may look like.

How Reliable is Corporate Social Responsibility?

By Lorna Taylor

Pressure is increasing on large organisations to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability across the three pillars of economic performance, social equity and environmental protection. There are many good stories of CSR in practice, but many others are undermining the principles of CSR.

Think back 15 years. The organic and fair-trade industries were small niche markets for dedicated sustainability enthusiasts. Nowadays they are found in every major supermarket with a huge following.

However, along with this boom in sustainability and CSR came ‘greenwash’ - “disinformation disseminated by an organisation, so as to present an environmentally responsible public image.” The term greenwash may now be outdated but the problem remains; it encompasses not just misleading environmental claims but also ethical and social ones.

Time and again we hear how large organisations that have caused social or environmental damage rapidly take up new CSR initiatives to counteract the bad press and encourage perceptions of ‘good’ corporate citizenship. But CSR should not be a cover up, or a PR tool; it should be embedded in the organisation at every level. Corporate actions need to match CSR claims.

Christian Aid in 2004 named and shamed large organisations involved in greenwash, revealing CSR projects that were misleadingly marketed as ‘the right thing’, when in fact they were not feasible; unsuccessful or detrimental to local communities. Commenting on Shell in the oil producing region of the Niger Delta, their report states, “The region is now a veritable graveyard of projects, including water systems that do not work, health centres that have never opened and schools where no lesson has been taught.”

CSR should be about companies outlining their social and environmental goals and committing to follow through. However, there is very little independent regulation to monitor such commitments. Should governments control companies’ efforts through increased legislation, or in the true spirit of CSR, should organisations be regulating themselves? Unfortunately, whilst self-regulation may be preferable, it does not always occur. Corporate statements of CSR no longer guarantee good practice.

Greenwash is not always deliberate; laziness and ignorance are common causes. CSR, or sustainability, is a difficult term to define and definitions tend to be vague due to its broad nature. Stakeholders have adapted and moulded the CSR concept to work for them; but ulterior motives have also resulted in confusion, greenwashing and the compromise of long-term sustainability goals.

Despite some progress, governmental regulation and political action is required to rebuild faith in the concept and monitor CSR delivery. Sustainability in its current form is not sustainable. CSR needs to evolve, becoming more accountable and embedded in core societal changes in order to provide truly sustainable benefits for society.

Accountability is the key to addressing the issue of greenwashing and ensuring that CSR is sustainable. Corporate Social Responsibility has to grow into Corporate Social Accountability, measuring the impact of actions, not just what actions have been taken.

References

Christian Aid, 2004. Behind The Mask: The real face of Corporate Social Responsibility

Jim MacNeill, 2007. Our Common Future: Advance or Retreat? Sustainable Development: A New Urgency. Geneva: EcoLomics International.

John Drexhage and Deborah Murphy, 2010. Sustainable Development: From Brundtland to Rio 2012, International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)

Futerra Sustainability Communications, 2008. The Greenwash Guide

Sustainable development Innovation Briefs, Issue 1, February 2007, “CSR and Developing Countries: what scope for government action?”

CSR: Altruism vs. Enlightened Self-interest

By Jessica Friend

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can be justified either in terms of altruism or enlightened self-interest. On the one hand, definitions of CSR typically contain altruistic elements – such as unselfish concern for the welfare of others – requiring corporations to acknowledge their obligations to stakeholders. On the other hand, enlightened self-interest advances the belief that ethical behaviour can be good for business – for example, gaining a competitive edge by adding value to an organisation’s products or increasing the company’s public reputation.

Of these two approaches, it appears that enlightened self-interest is favoured most strongly by companies. For instance, over 70 percent of CEOs interviewed by Springpoint Consultancy agreed that CSR was essential for making a profit.

To illustrate this approach, Google’s CSR strategy is openly motivated by enlightened self-interest. Hence, according Axel Marrtinez, assistant treasurer for Google, the company invested US$28 million in 240 affordable housing units for low-income families in Boston, Massachusetts, not only to be a good corporate citizen, but also to benefit from an improvement in societal standing by being seen to contribute to social problem solving.

Often, CSR programs like Google’s are justified by enlightened self-interest enthusiasts purely on the basis of their utilitarian benefits – in this case, the material benefits of low-cost housing enjoyed by Boston residents is equal to the reputation gains and societal standing afforded to Google. Hence, CSR beneficiaries are viewed only in terms of their intrinsic value for the company.

This is where the donor-recipient relationship can seem exploitative and enlightened self-interest can damage the integrity of CSR. To reduce cynicism and to avoid producing exploitative-prone CSR strategies, altruism must be embedded within the corporation’s core purpose and the interests of all stakeholders must be taken into account, not only those of shareholders.

Aygaz, Turkey’s leading gas provider and a CIPR Excellence award winner, is a good example of a company with altruistic orientation. Their Climate Change Education Program aimed to increase awareness amongst Turks of global warming. Aygaz centred their program around the recipient, involving their customers in pilot projects, eventually achieving a 51 percent increase in climate change awareness. The 21 percent increase sale in gas appliances was an added bonus, rather than the sole focus of CSR activity.

Aygaz showed that CSR strategies motivated by genuine concern for the common good are less open for criticism. Accountability of CSR strategies is improved when beneficiaries are actively involved within the CSR design process and are seen as ‘ends’ in themselves, not simply a ‘means to an end’.

In conclusion, strong CSR strategies are those where altruism is deeply embedded within the organisation and places beneficiaries at the centre of programs, increasing both organisational accountability and transparency. Although enlightened self-interest provides a logical business reason for pursuing CSR strategies, these tend to produce weak programs open to accusations of ‘greenwashing’, PR-spin or stakeholder manipulation.

References

CIPR, 2011, ‘Excellence Award Winner Case Study – Aygaz with Lobby PR’ [Online] Available at http://www.cipr.co.uk/content/events-awards/excellence-awards/past-winners [accessed 5th January 2012]

Godelnik, R., 2011, ‘Google Investing in Low-Income Housing – Good Cause, Bad CSR?’ [Online] Available at http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/10/google-investing-low-income-housing-good-bad-csr/ [accessed 5th January 2012]

Employee Volunteering – If it’s so important, why aren’t we all doing it?

By Andrea Grace Rannard

Employee volunteering is widely acknowledged as an integral component of a company’s CSR activity. Yet, many companies don’t integrate it into their operations by giving staff time off to volunteer. And, for those companies that do, not all staff utilise it. So, do we take employee volunteering that seriously?

According to the 2010-11 Citizenship Survey, 25% of people volunteer on a monthly basis (1). If a company is a microcosm of wider society, then regardless of the formalised mechanisms to foster a culture of volunteering, people will not always engage with it.

Some companies are concerned that establishing a policy will result in huge uptake and adverse impact on core business. However, this can be refuted on two accounts: First, for any responsible employer, community investment via employee volunteering is core business. Second, offering employees time off to volunteer is a marathon rather than a sprint. For example, the FSA, who integrate volunteering into appraisals, offer employees up to 27 days of volunteering leave a year. Yet, only 20% of the workforce is engaged (2)

The main reason cited by people for not volunteering is a lack of time (3). So, perhaps addressing this barrier by formally allowing staff time off to volunteer will go some way in demonstrating a company’s commitment to CSR and employees without the fear of 100% workforce engagement.

Browsing through a company’s CR report, it is obvious that volunteering is a useful mechanism to report employee engagement and community impact. Yet, despite the importance of capturing outputs, there appear to be mixed feelings about embedding employee volunteering into operations, for example through appraisals and volunteering leave days.

From a company perspective, adapting HR procedures to implement new volunteering policies can involve significant resource. If the demand from staff isn’t explicit, why make company-wide changes?

Of course, employee volunteering arrangements can be made on an informal basis between employees and line managers, not necessitating formal procedure. The output remains the same – employees volunteer. Also, an informal approach may make volunteering more attractive.

However, as with any activity a company takes seriously – whether it is promoting diversity or sustainable procurement – formalisation is helpful to embed a company-wide culture and demonstrate commitment. Creating formalised channels for volunteering can also ensure a more robust data capture system, supporting wider CSR reporting. This includes generating personal case studies that bring reporting to life.

Another benefit of having a policy on volunteering is that it helps reinforce the company’s brand and reputation. Allowing volunteering leave can also make the company an attractive place to work, forming part of a wider portfolio of employee benefits such as training, pension and healthcare provision.

Finally, there is significant evidence to support the engaged employer argument (Gallup 2006, CMI 2008,MacLeod and Clarke 2009) including reduced staff turnover, higher levels of productivity and profitability, fewer sick days, increased levels of innovation and improved morale. (4-6)

References

(1) Department for Communities and Local Government (2011) Citizenship Survey: 2010-11

(April 2010 – March 2011, England), Statistical Release Number 16

(2) Corporate Citizenship (2010) Volunteering – The Business Case: The benefits of coporate volunteering programmes in education

(3) National Centre for Social Research in partnership with the Institute for Volunteering Research (2007) A National Survey of Volunteering and Charitable Giving 2006-07 (Helping Out)

(4) Gallup (2006) Gallup Study: Feeling Good Matters in the Workplace

(5) Kumar, V. and Wilton, P. (2008) ‘Briefing note for the MacLeod Review’, Chartered Management Institute

(6) MacLeod, D. and Clarke, N. (2009) Engaging for Success: enhancing performance through employee engagement

Cracking the CSR Codes Puzzle

By Dr Wayne Visser

Part 5 of 13 in Wayne Visser's Age of Responsibility Blog Series for 3BL Media.

Looking back, we can see that the 1990s were the decade of CSR codes – not only EMAS, ISO 14001 and SA 8000, but also the Forest Steward Council (FSC) and Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Certification Schemes, Green Globe Standard (tourism sector), Corruption Perceptions Index, Fairtrade Standard, Ethical Trading Initiative, Dow Jones Sustainability Index and OHSAS 18001 (health & safety), to mention just a few. But all that was just a warm up act when we look at the last 10 years, when we have seen codes proliferate in virtually every area of sustainability and responsibility and all major industry sectors. So much so that in the A to Z of Corporate Social Responsibility, we included over 100 such codes, guidelines and standards – and that was just a selection of what it out there. To illustrate the point, here is a sample of what has been thrust onto corporate agendas since the year 2000:

The Carbon Disclosure Project; Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation; GRI Sustainability Reporting Guidelines; Kimberley Process (to stop trade in conflict diamonds); Mining and Minerals for Sustainable Development (MMSD) Project; UN Global Compact; UN Millennium Development Goals; Voluntary Principles on Human Rights; FTSE4Good Index; Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS; Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; Business Principles for Countering Bribery; Publish What Pay Campaign; Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development; London Principles (finance sector); AA 1000 Assurance Standard; Equator Principles (finance sector); Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI); Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil; Global Corruption Barometer; UN Convention Against Corruption; UNEP Finance Initiative; UN Norms on Business and Human Rights; World Bank Extractive Industries Review; AA 1000 Standard for Stakeholder Engagement; EU Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment; ISO 14064 Standard on Greenhouse Gas Accounting and Verification; Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change; Bribe Payers’ Index; UN Principles for Responsible Investment; ClimateWise Principles (insurance sector); UNEP Declaration on Climate Change; UN Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME); Bali, Poznan and Copenhagen Communiqués (climate change) ... and many, many more.

No wonder companies are suffering from code fatigue and audit exhaustion. It is the supreme paradox of the Age of Management – companies are pressured to standardise their efforts on sustainability and responsibility, while stakeholders and critics (myself included) remain unconvinced that this approach identifies or addresses the root causes of the problems we face. Many of the institutional failures over the past 20 years have, I would argue, been systemic failures of culture, rather than bureaucratic failures of management; they have more to do with a prevailing set of values than a particular set of procedures.

The latest in this code-mania is ISO 26000 on Social Responsibility. I have suggested before that ISO 26000 is like a teddy bear – something cute and fluffy, which may help companies sleep better at night, but nothing like the grizzly bear that we really need to shake business out of their CSR complacency. Of course, it is unfair of me to make so light of a five-year international process of negotiation involving over 90 countries, which managed to reach some measure of agreement on such tricky issues as human rights and fair operating practices. But I really do believe that, as a non-certifiable guidance standard that promotes a strategic approach to CSR (rather than a transformative CSR 2.0 agenda), ISO 26000 may prove to be more of a damp squib than a big bang.

Having said that, I must give ISO 26000 its due – as a foundation document that encapsulates the international consensus on social responsibility, it is to be applauded and recommended. Its greatest achievement – and what I expect may prove to be its most enduring legacy – is the way in which it broadens the scope of CSR, first beyond big corporates to any organisation, and second beyond an exclusive focus on philanthropic community development to incorporate six other core subjects, namely organisational governance, human rights, labour rights, the environment, fair operating practices and consumer issues.

Besides this, countries like Denmark are ignoring ISO’s strong declaration against ISO 26000 certification schemes and have begun developing their own certifiable national standard, DS 26000. I expect consultants will also increasingly offer ISO 26000 compliance auditing services, irrespective of whether these are sanctioned by ISO. The fact is that business, governments and civil society alike want standards on social responsibility with ‘teeth’. A decade of weak standards without sanction, like the UN Global Compact and AA 1000, as compared with tougher certification schemes like SA 8000 and the Forest Stewardship Council, have taught us where real value lies.

I believe that the codes-based approach, which I call Strategic CSR in an Age of Management, fails on three counts. First, the incremental approach of CSR, while replete with evidence of micro-scale, gradual improvements, has completely and utterly failed to make any impact on the massive sustainability crises that we face, many of which are getting worse at a pace that far outstrips any futile CSR-led attempts at amelioration.

Second, CSR is, at best, a peripheral function in most companies. There may be a CSR manager, a CSR department even, a CSR report and a public commitment to any number of CSR codes and standards. But these do little to change the underlying growth-and-consumption model that fuels environmental degradation and social disruption.

Third, the ‘inconvenient truth’ is that CSR sometimes pays, in specific circumstances, but more often, it is still uneconomic. Of course there are low-hanging fruit – like eco-efficiencies around waste and energy – but most of the hard-core CSR changes that are needed require strategic change and massive investment, which the markets don’t support.

So where does this leave us? I have argued so far that the Ages of Greed, Philanthropy, Marketing and Management have brought us to a point of crisis in CSR. Specifically, CSR is failing to turn around our most serious global problems – the very issues it purports to be concerned with – and may even be distracting us from the real issue, which is business’s role causal role in the social and environmental crises we face. In the rest of this blog series, I will explore what a different approach – CSR 2.0 – may look like.

About the author

Dr Wayne Visser is Founder and Director of the think-tank CSR International and consultancy Kaleidoscope Futures Ltd. He is the author of thirteen books, including The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business (2011), The World Guide to CSR (2010) and The A to Z of Corporate Social Responsibility (2010). He is the author of over 180 publications (chapters, articles, etc.) and has delivered more than 170 professional speeches on in over 50 countries in the last 20 years. In addition, Wayne is Senior Associate at the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership, Visiting Professor of Sustainability at Magna Carta College, Oxford, and Adjunct Professor of CSR at Warwick Business School, UK.

I Am Fat and It Is Your Fault!

By Alicia de la Peña

In 2006, the Mexican Institute for Public Health warned that, despite persistent poverty levels, the country was facing an obesity pandemic. (National Institute of Public Health, 2010). High rates of malnutrition among the poorest people in Mexico still exist, but a change in lifestyle patterns - leading families to eat more processed foods, engage in less physical activity and consume more edible oils and sweetened beverages - has resulted in rates of obesity comparable to many developed countries. (Popkin, Adair, & Wen Ng, 2011)

It is true that each individual is responsible for what he or she eats. But children have less choice - they eat what their parents give them. And parents argue that they cannot afford to provide for a healthy diet. For example one litre of milk in Mexico costs about $1, the same as three litres of soda which tastes better and is more widely available. With a minimum wage in Mexico of less than 5 dollars a day, is it surprising that families are buying more soda than milk?

As consumers, we expect that food and beverage manufacturers apply the highest ethical - that the products we purchase are fresh and pure; that we are charged a fair price for these goods; and that they are made available to us where and when we require them. But, increasingly, we expect marketers to go beyond this – to also take on responsibility for our consumption behavior. As a result, some self-regulatory bodies, food marketers and advertising agencies have begun to take action on health issues. (Mueller, 2007)

The Mexican government has also begun proactively regulating companies that sell processed foods such as sodas, chips and cookies. The advertising and food industry has, in turn, developed several of the new standards – like the PABI Code (2007). (PABI CODE, 2007). There have also been efforts to legislate against the sale of foods and drinks of low nutritional value in schools. As a result we now have smaller versions of the products with lower calories, but still aimed at children.

Is this an adequate solution? I believe that besides the regulatory measures and changes in product size and ingredients, we have to educate consumers - to make them co-responsible of their behavior and teach them to make healthful choices. Otherwise, we will end blaming the government for our bad choices (which is not untypical in Mexico) and expecting the public health system to take care of increasing numbers of Mexicans with diabetes and heart disease.

References

PABI CODE. (2007). Recuperado el 17 de Feb de 2012, de Self regulation advertising code of food and beverages aimed to the children: http://www.e-consulta.com/blogs/educacion/imgs_10/codigo_pabi.pdf

National Institute of Public Health. (2010). Recuperado el 17 de Feb de 2012, de http://www.insp.mx/noticias/nutricion-y-salud/1200-crecen-sobrepeso-y-obesidad-infantil-en-mexico-11-al-ano.html

Mueller, B. (2007). Just where does corporate responsibility end and consumer responsibility begin? The case of marketing food to ids around the globe. International Journal of Advertising, 26(4), 561-564.

Popkin, B. M., Adair, L. S., & Wen Ng, S. (2011). Global nutrition transition and the pandemic of obesity in developing countries. Nutrition Reviews, 70(1), 3-21.