Sustainability r e p o r t - Sabesp

CorporategovernanceGRI 4.1Expansion of Corporate Governance is aconstant challenge for a Company that wasthe first state-controlled company in Brazil toundertake, in April 2002, the BM&FBovespa’sNovo Mercado and simultaneously theCompany’s shares were listed in the New YorkStock Exchange (NYSE).Engagement of StakeholdersThe purpose is to improve the relations with the different socio-environmental and economicplayers, linked to the company’s activities, to gather inputs for the 2009 Sustainability Report. Wecover below the main improvement considerations:i. we conducted two, and not only one, stakeholders involvement panels, covering socialresponsibility and environmental responsibility separately, held in October and November2009, respectively. This created increased synergy in discussion because of the higher levelof familiarity of the participants with the topics covered. It also resulted in having more thantwice the participants, which reached a total of 214 people, against 99 in prior year. Therepresentativeness was high, with a significant presence of 62 directors from different entities.ii. the events were organized before the issuance of the document, which gave us more time torespond, not only to the topics in the agenda but also to open other channels. The highlightwas one of the suggestions to use the monthly gatherings with community leaders to discussthe report.iii. we opted for a less formal system, since we understood that the dynamics of small workgroupswith invited people/entities could restrict the discussions to a body of experts, instead of openingthe discussion of any topic to a broad audience, including those not so familiarized with thistype of document, which could multiply its dissemination and allow people to read the report ina more knowledgeable way, once issued. Therefore, we gave up capturing only responses of amore technical nature to promote a more didactic discussion of key issues, such as why issuingMongaguá STP works.the report, its significance, and the importance of having society participating not onlyin the report itself but also in defining priorities of projects. This meant extending theinvitation for the two events to a broader audience, including 600 members of NGOs,250 representatives of teaching institutions, 540 representatives of public agencies, 630media representatives, 280 representatives of industrial and professional associations,80 representatives of banks, and 350 from companies (suppliers and service providers).Many of these people forwarded our invitation to their contacts.iv. we decided to host these events in locations related to the topic covered andnot in a hotel. Thus, the social responsibility event was held in a school circusmaintained by Instituto Criança Cidadã (Citizen Child Institute), in a favela in SãoPaulo—the San Remo community—and the environmental dimension at Associaçãode Amigos de Taiaçupeba (Taiaçupeba Friends Association), which promote theenvironmental education and the recovery of river bank forests.v. in April 2010, before the issuance of the final version of this report, we organizedthe 22nd sustainability hearing to launch the report and hear additional suggestionsfrom society. A panel of personalities commented in a roundtable the environmental,social and economic dimensions, and the customer vision.70 71