Global Governance, Environment and CSR: Managing National and Global Synergies for Responsible and Sustainable Growth

FLACSO ARGENTINA, Buenos Aires, 4 – 6 July 2007

Global environmental concerns are more and more acute for the general public. The increased press coverage of environment related reports emanating from both governmental and non governmental agencies, the success of the film An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore, daily phenomena linked to climate change that can no longer be ignored worldwide are among the most visible factors of this rise of awareness. In addition, environmental limits are becoming a matter of concerns no longer limited to the restricted sphere of environmentalist discourse and are now to be found high on the list of major threats to global growth future prospects in an article signed by Martin Wolf in December 2006.

Garnet’s research commitment to deepen analysis of environmental questions is reflected in its initial research programme. In 2007 environment related activities are particularly salient on the Consortium agenda with the Garnet winter PhD’s school on Global Environmental Governance, as well as a series of ongoing related research projects.

Garnet’s third capacity building workshop, designed to spread excellence through dialogue, will build on these different activities and offer a platform to assess the kind of national, regional and global synergies necessary to ensure responsible and sustainable growth from an environmental point of view.

Following a High Level Opening Session on the first night, researchers drawn from the Garnet Consortium will submit their research findings related to global environmental governance to local academic discussants. Then the programme will unfold in three steps: focusing on Mercosur, it will first assess the regional grouping’s mechanisms for addressing environmental concerns; second, this will then be set in the context of EU-Mercosur relationships from a multidimensional perspective (trade, technology transfer, learning, investment, regulation, etc); third, the impact of global/regional environment policy on MNC corporate governance practices will be studied: how and how far are environmental corporate policies reflected in the supply chain; what role can civil society and activist groups play in moving the corporate agenda forward and helping in setting standards?

Participants of this third capacity building workshop, drawn from different sectors of society and from different cultures and generations, will have the task to reflect on these issues and elaborate a set of suggestions on ways to enhance environmental corporate policies, the cooperation between the different stakeholders, and ensure their impact at the international and regional levels, concentrating primarily on the EU-Mercosur relationship. Results of the working groups sessions will be presented on the last day of the workshop, roadmaps will be produced and circulated with the aim of informing the policy sector, researchers from the Garnet consortium and environmental activists.

The programme of this third Garnet capacity building workshop is designed to bring together academics, civil society, business and government representatives active in the field of the environment and CSR. Local costs will be covered by the organisers and travel subsidies are available upon motivated request.

A full report for the event can be found here

Here you may find some pictures taken on the last day.