Cover Story
Cover Story
Fall 2016 / Issue 51
Best Practices in Business-CSO Cooperation – Environment
Co operation between the private sector and civil society in Macedonia is of utmost importance . Companies have various responsibilities related to the environment and transparency to the general public . Product-oriented companies produce or import goods that later become waste . Construction companies enter natural habitats to secure space for their buildings . Mining and cement companies dig and destroy the biodiversity in a given area . All these activities are covered by specific laws and regulations that need to be respected . Companies that affect the environment need to develop an “ Environmental Impact Assessment ” for review by the Ministry of Environment and the general public to gain approval for their activities . The “ Strategic Environmental Assessment ” is another document that companies need before changing the “ urban plan ” of an area . In this process , average citizens need to be actively involved and informed about what is going to happen to their area and how it will affect their lives . The Aarhus Convention guarantees citizens access to information related to the environment as well as inclusion in the decision-making process .
Civil society has a crucial role in making sure that laws
Author : Antonio Jovanovski , Executive director NGO “ Go Green – Skopje ” are respected and citizens are properly informed and included in the decision making process . Civil society organizations ( CSOs ) are committed to seeking accountability and responsibility from companies and making sure that they fulfill their legal responsibilities in an honest and wholehearted manner . CSOs can also increase the capacity of companies to fulfill their legal obligations , provide training and increase their transparency towards the public . The dialogue and cooperation between companies and civil society is useful for both sides to understand the challenges and bottlenecks , but also to expose opportunities to enhance environmental protection and living standards .
Go Green has experie nce helping companies comply with their legal responsibilities . Its “ Go Clean ” project focused implementing the Law on Batteries and Battery Disposal and established a sustainable system of battery waste management . The companies that import batteries are the “ polluters ” in this case and they have the responsibility to contribute to a collection system for citizens to dispose of their old batteries in a proper manner . Toward that end , we organized several workshops with the importers of batteries and helped them create the system . Throughout the course of the project , we convinced big supermarkets to install hundreds of collection bins for used batteries and connected them with a licensed company that collects and processes the waste batteries in the proper way . We also trained company employees and jointly organized several campaigns to inform citizens and collect used batteries . In this way , the project engaged both companies already required by law to contribute to the waste disposal system ( importers ) as well as those that were not yet required by law ( distributors ).
Another example of Go Green ’ s successful private sector cooperation was with a company from the cement industry . Our cooperation helped establish environmental policies at the core of their work , including proactively informing the public about their work . Their CSR report is not a pro-forma document . The organization contributes meaningfully to community development . Go Green also helped increase their transparency and educational activities targeting young people on topics such as resource efficiency and the circular economy .
There are also many challenges related to transparency and sharing information with the public . For example , the annual reports of some of the companies responsible for waste management are not published on their websites . There is a reluctance in sharing this information with the justification that “ business secrets ” would be disclosed , which isn ’ t a valid argument when a private company receives revenues from environmental taxes .
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