Stakeholder Integration

1 Introduction

1.1 Research Background

Earth Summit, UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) was held in Rio de Janeiro for the first time in the history. Agreements are reached on the action plan Agenda 21 and on the convention on biological diversity, the framework convention on climate change and non-binding Forest Principles. To ensure follow-up to UNCED, enhance international cooperation and rationalize intergovernmental decision-making capacity, the first meeting of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development was established in 1993.

The World Summit for Social Development in 1995 held in Copenhagen, is the first time the international community expresses a clear commitment to eradicating absolute poverty. In the same year, the Fourth World Conference on Women was held in Beijing, which recognized that despite the advancing of women status, obstacles remain to the realization of women’s rights as human rights. The same year also marked the establishment of World Trade Organization (WTO), with formal recognition of trade, environment and development linkages, although in the following years, the organization often receives criticism for widening the social gap and responsible for the negative effect of globalization.

Dow Jones Sustainability indexes was launched in 1999, the first of its kind, as a tool to provide guidance to investors for profitable companies that follow sustainable development principles. At the end of 1990, it was discovered that nearly 90 percent of the Fortune 500 companies listed CSR as one of the basic elements of their organizational goals, actively reporting the CSR events held by these corporations in their annual reports. According to a triennial study by KPMG in 2001, 45% of the 250 largest global companies published corporate responsibility reports, up from 35% three years ago, reflecting more companies taking initiatives towards sustainable development.

In year 2000, the largest-ever gathering of world leaders agrees to a set of time-bound and measurable goals for combating poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women, to be achieved by 2015, the UN Millennium Development Goals. For the consistency of reporting, Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) released the guidelines for sustainable reporting of business activities by providing a comprehensive sustainable reporting framework, also known as ecological footprint reporting, environmental social governance (ESG) reporting, triple bottom line (TBL) reporting, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting in 2002.

Rapid changes arrived around 2008, when World food, fuel and financial crises converge. Global food prices increase 43% in one year; growing energy demand in China, India and elsewhere sends energy prices soaring; financial institutions falter over the collapse