Getting Business on Board

The link between business and environmental governance is simple. Businesses are among the world’s most influential institutions. As society’s mechanism for production and consumption, their decisions have significant environmental effects. Those decisions have ever-greater reach as companies globalize and national resources are privatized. Better environmental governance simply isn’t possible without business on board. That means sharing information with stakeholders, making decisions in an open and transparent process rather than behind closed boardroom doors, and actively seeking investments that can benefit both the environment and the bottom line.

Business transparency and accountability are prerequisites for better environmental governance. They are the necessary complement to greater openness on the part of governments and more public participation in government policies. As is the case with government, one of the most potent tools to drive greater business accountability is public access to information. Public disclosure

—from mandatory pollution reporting, to voluntary “sustainability reporting,” to eco-labeling—is the face of a new and more participatory approach to regulating the environmental performance of businesses. Using the tool of disclosure, communities and consumers enter a new relationship with business that can speed the transition to a greener business model.