Meaningful public participation in business decisions.

• Author: Kaingu, Namakau
• Position: Global Sustainable Development: The Corporate Responsibility

As Ambassador Lars-Goran Engfeldt notes on the preceding page, partnerships with private business will be essential components to reinforce new government commitments to sustainable development. In this special section, we bring three perspectives on how these partnerships can be realized and what private business itself can do to further the process.

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...