From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWERimportance in China; however, it was little in evidence in the other‘BRIC’ country, Russia. 114 In Hong Kong, Oxfam is in regular dialoguewith clothing companies that have regionalised and now run garmentfactories in Cambodia and other countries in the region. In Indonesia,Unilever conducted groundbreaking research with Oxfam to understandits ‘poverty footprint’, exploring its impact on small farmers,suppliers, and distributors, as well as employees. 115Transparency: For firms to be accountable, they must first provideinformation on issues such as their social and environmental policiesand impacts. Nike broke new ground in 2004 when it published a listof its supplier factories worldwide. There are numerous initiatives tocodify how data should be collected and reported. The GlobalReporting Initiative, in particular, has become increasingly sophisticatedand is now commonly used by leading companies across variousindustries. 116 The general principle of transparency should also beextended to corporate lobby activities at both national and internationallevels.Monitoring and verification: If companies are to be transparent, theymust have something worth reporting. In many cases, corporationsare only now learning how to gather relevant social and environmentaldata (it took one major European garment retailer two years just toestablish where its clothes were being made), and there is a clear needto develop robust systems for doing so. Learning from peers and otherexperts is crucial. The Ethical Trading Initiative brings togethercompanies (mainly from the supermarket and garments sectors),trade unions, and NGOs to promote, monitor, and independentlyverify labour rights throughout global supply chains. 117Legal reporting requirements: Efforts to improve corporate performance(and curb abuses) can be greatly helped by home-countrygovernments passing legal requirements on companies to monitor theimpact of their activities and to publish reports of their findings.In the UK, changes in the law requiring companies to publish theirassessments of so-called ‘non-financial risks’ have galvanised effortsby long-term investors such as pensions funds to ensure that thecompanies in which they invest are not risking reputational damage,or endangering their long-term survival, by cutting corners on socialand environmental issues.348