Title: Corporate responsibility reporting of biodiversity in the supply chain

Authors: Derek R. Whatling, Peter Hedges, Ross Brown, Philip Fermor

Addresses: Sustainable Environment Research Group, School of Engineering and Applied Science, Aston University, UK. ' Sustainable Environment Research Group, School of Engineering and Applied Science, Aston University, UK. ' AstraZeneca (UK) Ltd., UK. ' Middlemarch Environmental Ltd., UK

Abstract: Industrial development, accompanying human population growth, has had a major role in creating the situation where bio-diverse materials and services essential for sustaining business are under threat. A major contributory factor to biodiversity decline comes from the cumulative impacts of extended supply chain business operations. However, within Corporate Responsibility (CR) reporting impacts on biodiversity due to supply chain operations have not traditionally been given equal weighting with other environmental issues. This paper investigates the extent of CR reporting in managing and publicising company biodiversity supply chain issues by reviewing a cross-sector sample of publicly available CR reports. The report contents were examined for suggestions of industrial sectorial trends in the level of biodiversity consideration. The reporting of environmental management system use within company supply chain management is assessed in the samples and is considered as a mechanism for responsible supplier partnership working.

Keywords: corporate responsibility; biodiversity; business; supply chain management; SCM; EMS; environmental management systems; risk; opportunity; sustainable procurement; corporate social responsibility; CSR.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISD.2010.034557

International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development, 2010 Vol.5 No.1, pp.51 - 64

Published online: 07 Aug 2010 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article