Corporate Accountability  

The primary objective of this project is to develop and launch a united civil society campaign against corporate abuse, in particular against those large multi-national corporations that are responsible for environmental destruction, wide-spread human suffering and pollution-related illnesses.

The focus on Corporate Accountability is something that local South African communities have been calling for, for some time now.  For many years communities in South Africa have been challenging companies that are polluting neighbourhoods. 

groundWork’s theme for the WSSD was Corporate Accountability.  During the week preceeding the WSSD (20 - 23 August) we hosted a Corporate Accountability Week in Sandton.  The theme for the week was: People's Action for Sustainable Development.  The event was co-hosted together with several international NGOs, such as Friends of the Earth, CorpWatch, Corporate Europe Observatory, Third World Network and Greenpeace, as well as local NGOs Earthlife Africa and EMG.  

One of the outcomes of the week was a resolution on corporate accounability which was signed by 65 organisations.  The resolution affirms the signatories commitment to "people-centred development which is equitable and sustainable and which secures social and environmental justice for allly. 

In January 2003 the WEF gathering in Davos, was upstaged by the parallel  NGO gathering entitled  "The Public Eye on Davos" as well as by the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre 

See:

Leading international environmental organisations unite to take action for corporate accountability  - 25-08- 2002

groundWork at the WSSD

groundWork launched its own Corporate Accountability project at the WSSD. This involved:

• Launching and distributing a series of five booklets that will inform decision makers and negotiators at the WSSD as to the reality that faces civil society in the in the areas of industrial and technological insult. Forty thousand booklets of these booklets will be distributed during the WSSD.
• Hosting a Corporate Accountability Week for community and non-governmental organisations (see above). 
• Facilitating the formulation of an international resolution on Corporate Accountability

For groundWork, WSSD was part of a larger process that seeks to develop the space for civil society to challenge and contest weak and unjust environmental governance, not only at the WSSD, but beyond.

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