Event reports
The People’s Republic is the largest emitter of CO2 and other green house gases. Therefore international climate protection targets can only be reached if China makes a contribution. The Chinese government has realised this challenge and introduced several measures to reduce the economy’s energy intensity. The measures include incentives, which are supposed to stimulate the adaption of more climate friendly production technologies. But these are only minimum standards.
Given awareness of the topic’s relevance as well as the legal regulations companies can carry out their own initiatives that go far beyond those standards. Furthermore not only companies in energy intensive industries can contribute to climate protection.
In the overall concept of CSR, sustainable development including climate and environmental protection are included as central aims. A large number of companies have recognized that they can improve their standing in society by contributing to China’s sustainable development. Nevertheless the concept of CSR is in its very beginning in China. Therefore the workshop “Corporate Social Responsibility and Climate Policy” aimed at spreading the concept and experiences in China.
In his keynote, Rolf Dietmar, project director of the Sino-German CSR Project of GIZ China, presented the concept of CSR. He pointed out the use of CSR for companies as well as developments in this area in China. Companies profit from the implementation of CSR programmes, because they promote customer loyalty and employee’s motivation. Until the year 2000 CSR was widely unknown in China. The first incentives came from international trading companies, which demanded minimum standards from their suppliers. Recently also the Chinese government demands CSR reports, especially from state-owned enterprises (SOEs). During the last five years the number of such reports sharply increased and even Chinese small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly interested in the topic.
Jin Chunqing, attorney at the Fangben Law Office, agreed that especially among SOEs positive developments can be seen. So far corruption hinders ethic behaviour and therefore CSR and “corporate compliance” cannot be seen separated from each other. Ms. Gong Xun, CSR manager at the world biggest computer producer Lenovo, presented Lenovo’s CSR strategy in the area of climate protection. Lenovo reached its aim of a climate neutral production already in 2011 and is now planning to reduce indirect emissions as well as emissions along the value chain. She stressed that suppliers also have to be considered and that the economic life-time of the products has to be taken into account.
Li Rusong, China-director of the global Carbon Disclosure Projects (CDP), clarified the increasing role of NGOs for the implementation of effective CSR in the area of climate protection. A growing number of companies use the CDP CSR platform to give information about their achievements in terms of the reductions of CO2 emissions. In China the interest of companies in this platform was quite low in the beginning, meanwhile more and more companies see the advantages of CSR.
The workshop made clear that CSR has to be an integral part of every modern and responsible company strategy and contributes to the maintenance of the company’s competiveness.
The results of the discussion are the basis for a publication on “Social Responsibility – Companies and Climate Protection in China”, which will be published with the support of the KAS in spring 2013.