Environmental Accountability: An Empirical Analysis of Swiss Corporate Environmental Reports 1999-2003

概要

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ISO14001 and other standards for corporate environmental management have become common tools for business to counter the challenge imposed by the required shift towards an ecologically sustainable economy. Although these standards stipulate minimal standards to comply with, the environmental accountability of EMS certificates is rather limited, when it comes to the environmental footprint of an organisation and the respective performance. Hence, the communication of scope and priorities as well as achievements are vital to bring about trust. In this paper, the status quo of corporate environmental accountability is assessed. Starting from a global perspective, the diffusion of such reports is characterised. In a second step, a definition of environmental accountability is elaborated against the ultimate goal and scope of ISO14001. Based on this definition, a detailed set of criteria is derived to evaluate all publicly available corporate environmental reports in Switzerland. The results demonstrate, that the current situation is highly insufficient: only a small fraction of all EMS certified companies does provide reports. But even within the reporters only a small number of companies can be considered to be environmentally accountable.
2005-03-31