15 December 2006
Corporate Social Responsibility Focus of Brazil Conference
U.S. officials participate in December event in Salvador, Brazil
Washington -- “Prosperous communities are good for business,” according to the head of a U.S. agency dedicated to promoting grassroots development in Latin American and the Caribbean. Larry Palmer, president of the Inter-American Foundation, called on the private sector to help the poor “discover within themselves the capacity to thrive and prosper.”
Palmer was addressing the Fourth Inter-American Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility, at which he and other speakers discussed such issues as how the private sector can generate profits while also acting as responsible corporate citizens who offer quality jobs and serve communities as a whole. (See related article.)
The concept that companies should serve as good citizens -- a practice known as corporate social responsibility (CSR) -- was the focus of the December 10-12 conference in the Brazilian city of Salvador, a conference that numbered several U.S. officials among its 500 participants from 20 countries. The conference was sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Brazil-based nongovernmental organization called the Ethos Institute, and the Federation of Industries in the Brazilian state of Bahia.
In his prepared remarks, Palmer said he did not want to focus on corporate social responsibility per se because conference participants were experts and already committed to the practice. Rather, he spoke about “healthy, prosperous communities and how CSR might contribute to that” goal. Palmer, a former U.S. diplomat, said his agency believes that the most healthy and prosperous nations are built by citizens who take “ownership” of their communities.
Palmer’s foundation says in its mission statement that it channels funds directly to the nongovernmental sector to promote entrepreneurship and innovation, and to “empower poor people to solve their own problems.”
The foundation helped gather a panel of speakers at the Brazil conference to address “Diversity in the Workplace and Inclusive Social Investment.” The panel, which included leaders from the Latin American corporate world and nongovernmental organizations, discussed such issues as “innovative collaboration between not-for-profit organizations and their corporate partners.”
Also speaking at the Brazil conference was Sarah Cook, an international trade specialist and program manager from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Cook participated in a panel about collective private-sector action to fight corruption, which focused on business approaches “to fight corruption collectively with the aim of improving the business environment using CSR, corporate governance and business ethics strategies.”
Antonio Vives, the IDB’s sustainable development department manager, said in a December 12 statement about the Brazil conference that the business community is responsible for acting in its “best individual and collective interest to contribute to economic development,” while also “doing business in a profitable manner.”
Previous inter-American conferences on corporate social responsibility were held in 2005 in Chile, 2004 in Mexico City, and 2003 in Panama. The next such conference will be held in November 2007 in Guatemala City.
A one-day follow-up conference to the 2006 meeting was held in Salvador on December 13. That conference discussed possible differences in European, Latin American and Caribbean approaches to CSR. The conference was a joint initiative of the IDB and the government of Denmark, with support from the European Commission.
More information about the two conferences in Brazil is available on the IDB Web site.
Additional information about the Inter-American Foundation is available on its Web site.
See also the February 2005 electronic journal, Promoting Growth Through Corporate Governance.
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
