Corporate activity, overall, continues to have an enormous and often detrimental impact on the environment in particular and society as a whole. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is an affirmation for the development of alternative policies, practices, and products that will abate these impacts.

Green Capital is an initiative of Total Environment Centre (TEC), which aims to encourage and facilitate the development of CSR both in its own right and in bringing together the key stakeholders from industry, government and civil society groups to build a platform for constructive dialogue and debate on key issues.

Green Capital aims to develop active working relationships with companies looking to work cooperatively across the spectrum of corporate sustainability. This can take a broad focus or look directly at key issues. The benefits to companies come in terms of direct assistance and support for your sustainability agenda; access to NGO thinking on a spectrum of issues; the chance to discuss your challenges with peers from a range of industry sectors; and an opportunity to participate in constructive dialogue and debate on issues of contention between civil society and the corporate sector.

Our Program is unique within the advocacy community in that it focuses on the leading edge issues of sustainability. While it is 'owned' by an environment group we deliberately place as much emphasis on social, governance, and economic issues as we do on the environment.

One of our 'core' competencies is our ability to engage the appropriate audiences. While this is obviously demonstrated by the audiences at our events it is also a trait of our parent organisation, TEC - which has a constructive relationship with government and highlighted by its work with over 300 civil society groups.

We would like to stress that while Green Capital is enthusiastic about the prospects of working closely with business, it is our policy not to endorse any company, product or process where we have not conducted a full independent review. This doesn't mean that we don't congratulate organisations for undertaking important and valuable work within the sustainability arena.

TEC also provides a variety of assistance to many companies in support of their efforts to drive sustainability. The combination of Green Capital's experience working with business on sustainability issues together with TEC's experience on a wide range of environmental campaigns provides for useful feedback on individual business programs, policies and initiatives.

THE CORNERSTONES OF GREEN CAPITAL

Quarterly Business Debates

The Green Capital breakfast debates and cocktail forums are our best-known feature. We view these as a platform to celebrate success; critically analyse CSR implementation; and attract attention to key issues. Like most such events, the public and media focus on these events grab the spotlight. They are important in that they generate most of our core funding, build dialogue and keep the CSR agenda in the media and the business diary. Many of our Business Leaders Forums and other project based work directly link into the issues discussed at the major events. It is also important to recognise they are not the only focus of our work.

The Business Forums

A key challenge within the Green Capital Business Plan includes the critical importance of driving CSR further into the boardrooms of Corporate Australia. The Business Leaders Forums are small, high-level meetings aimed at gathering leaders from business and civil society sectors to discuss a particular sustainability issue in depth. One example is Green Capital's Multi-State Emissions Trading Forum which brought together key experts from business and government for a briefing with Ministers Sartor and Thwaites in NSW and Victoria. The ideas and solutions put forward at this meeting were able to contribute directly to the policy debate.

Involving the NGO Sector

We aim to help the NGO sector (national and state peak groups) to participate in the Green Capital Program and engage with business. At our "MRET and the NEM" event, TEC co-coordinated contributions towards a "NGO Position Paper on the National Electricity Market" which was then distributed at the event. Other NGOs were directly involved in our Sustainability Reporting Project sponsored by DEC. Further opportunities will be utilised in 2005. We recently finalised negotiations to develop and share a CSR monitoring service for the NGO community.

Key Issues Review

Another cornerstone of Green Capital is cutting edge research and issue papers. The NSW Department of Environment and Conservation has partnered with Green Capital to develop a series of stakeholder reviews across a broad agenda of their work. This will include the development of issues papers and high-level discussion workshops.

Key Issues we have covered include; Sustainability Reporting; Sustainability Settings to Drive Investment; Sustainability & the Supply Chain; and Regional Sustainability and Development.