Companies that have signed the United Nations Global Compact have improved their social and environmental sustainability, demonstrating the correlation between advanced CSR performance and membership of the UN programme.
The United Nations Global Compact was established in 2000 with the aim of promoting a sustainable global economy that respects human rights and the environment. The initiative encourages companies around the world to adopt sustainable policies and to "share, support and enact within their sphere of influence a set of core values, in the areas of human rights, labour standards, environmental protection and anti-corruption". Membership of the UN Global Compact is bearing the hoped-for fruit, and companies that sign up to it are improving their CSR.
This is what emerged from a report produced by EcoVadis, a company that provides sustainability ratings of suppliers for global supply chains. The report analyses performance from a social and environmental sustainability standpoint, comparing companies that have signed the UN compact with those that have not.
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The report, which assessed the performance of more than 20,000 companies, highlights that companies which have joined the United Nations initiative recorded, on average, better sustainability performance, thus demonstrating a clear correlation between advanced CSR performance and membership of the Global Compact. "We have found encouraging evidence showing that companies that have adopted the principles of the United Nations Global Compact are working towards a more sustainable future," commented Sylvain Guyoton, analyst at EcoVadis.
Companies that have joined the global compact have improved the sustainability of their respective supply chains, and the best sustainability performance, the report reveals, was achieved by small and medium-sized enterprises. The most satisfactory results were recorded in the "human rights" and "environment" categories, while initiatives relating to "ethics" and "sustainable procurement" remain unsatisfactory.
"We need to achieve the sustainable development goals, for our own sake and for future generations — said Lise Kingo, CEO and Executive Director of the United Nations Global Compact. — More and more companies are supporting these goals, and now we need to make sustainability a mainstream reality for small and large companies around the world. It is encouraging to see how our ten principles on human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption are helping companies to improve their sustainability performance."
