What worth is CSR Assurance?

Recently a report came out about assuring CSR reports (i.e. verifying that the information in the reports are true) which was funded by CSR Assurance companies (hmmm), saying that not enough companies are assuring their CSR reports (surprise, surprise).

I would like to proffer that CSR assurance is actually pretty pointless and useless (in of itself) because:
1) How much time or effort do any of the assurers put into looking at any of the data to see if it is true; is it even possible to verify half the data anyway?
2) Is there any legal liability for assurers, like there is for assuring regular financial reports?
3) Does the assurance mean anything to the reader at all, or add any value to a CSR report?

Question 3 is rather interesting, because the best CSR reports now include all kinds of other methods of assurance, though not technically 'assurance' which for me are much more interesting and useful. These include comments from concerned employees or customers, (unedited) comments from critical stakeholder councils and even comments from a CSR expert on whether the key Reporting principles have been followed or not (e.g. GRI has several principles including materiality). Others include reports from SRI experts or other relevant shareholders.

All of these comments mean more than a statement that the numbers are correct, which i truly doubt, since many of the most important numbers are hard to measure and the rest rely on self-reporting from the company anyway (rather than some auditor going across the world to check on what the exact waste is from any particular machine and whether that is what it has been claimed to be).

So, nothing wrong with assurance, but i do not think it adds much value to a CSR report for external readers, and probably does not (in of itself) help a company improve itself internally. At least, in the press release, they admit that the quality of assurance varies widely, and also point out that many of the assurers are also the ones who help prepare the report!

Responding to signals and feedback

One of the most striking concepts in Diamond's book is that of the rulers and elite of a society becoming too insular from the actual society and thus unaware of the signals of pending problems; once they realise, it is too late to change.

In this sense, we must wonder whether the elite of society would be the ones most able to survive a collapse (and if so, they have no motivation to prevent a collapse) or whether they too would suffer.

Somewhat related to this is that it seems businesses are being more responsive to the trends in society than elite or politicians are; maybe because businesses are thinking long-term and elite or politicians are not. Businesses might, though not democratically elected, be more responsible to their share holders and customers and employees (through active media, NGOs etc) and thus responsive to changes. However the problem with business is, though they need a successful civilization/society/economy in order to exist, their focus is not on the success of society, their focus will be on profits or some other metric that is rather selfish (as with selfish, nationalistic, governments).

In this sense are the current systems of global governance helping or hindering in any improvements in our responses to the obvious destruction we are causing?

It would seem that the global formal and informal governance systems are not up to the job, but they themselves will protect themselves (and resist too many calls for change or competition for governing institutions) and we will be unable to solve global problems collectively, or as individuals.

Collapse of civilizations

Jared Diamond has moved on from Guns, Germs and Steel, which gave an account of what factors influenced the growth and development of civilisations in certain parts of the World and not in others. Collapse, looks at why civilisations, well, collapse..and why some do not. Well worth at watching his lecture, available online here.

A few key points include Jared's 5 main reasons for collapse:
1) Human environmental impacts
2) Climate change (and how that impacts environmental services provision)
3) Hostile neighbors (to take advantage of internal weaknesses)
4) Trading partners (as the society may be too dependent on successes or failures of neighboring societies)
5) A Society's institutions being able to perceive and solve, or ignoring and failing to solve the other 4 problems.

He also discusses some of the differences between the past and the present such as:
-We have more people with more potent destructive technologies that can cause more destruction more quickly.
-Faster communications and transportation of good and bad things like terrorists, immigrants and diseases.
-Societies cannot really collapse in isolation as there are likely to be consequences elsewhere, including remote countries like Somalia.

On the other hand, greater hope comes from the faster and greater spread of knowledge for us to learn from mistakes and successes around the World now, and in the past. This gives us the chance to know what we are doing and gives the choice to continue or to change.

Some things he seems to believe are not as important include cultural differences and political system differences, which is quite interesting. I have not read the book but am keen too. In particular I find 5) the most interesting issue.

In bad times...

If the Tragedy of the commons is a real problem, and has been especially so in recent times as everyone gets rich from the growing economy and if there has been a dash for wealth almost everywhere; a dash to cut up the 'economic pie' so to speak... well then, in bad times will the situation be worse or better? Will people get desperate and have even greater disregard for common property?

It seems to me that in good times we are selfish and in bad times, even more selfish. But there could be a tiny chance a few people might realise that if we all act less selfish we could all get to better times much quicker. The chances of that happening? Well, we just have to look at the past ... and hope the future is brighter!

Personally there is always some hope, as Margaret Mead said:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

Indeed, the only people who have changed the world are people -and people is a collective noun for many persons, which is a group of ONE person. ONE person who starts something, carries something on, supports something or does something... we must hope we can realise a balance between each of us acting as individuals (hopefully for good) and each of us releasing our responsibility and acting as a group (generally not for good).