Policies, Regulations, and Standards | Sustainable Business Network and Consultancy

Standards and Just and Sustainable Business

BSR’s advice, insight, and guidance for companies through our Membership and Advisory Services is founded upon well-established standards for just and sustainable business. We believe the following six globally agreed standards, which are directly applicable to business, provide the basic building blocks for most companies:

The Science Based Targets Initiative Net-Zero Standard for setting climate change targets.
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights for the corporate responsibility to respect human rights.
The International Sustainability Standards Board for reporting the impact of sustainability on enterprise value creation.
The Global Reporting Initiative Sustainability Reporting Standards for reporting the impact of the business on sustainability.
The UN Global Compact and OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprise provide universal principles for all companies.

Further, there are various issue- and industry-specific principles, standards, and guidelines that we recommend companies adopt when appropriate for their circumstances, some of which we played a role in creating via our collaborative initiatives. These include, but are not limited to:

The Global Network Initiative Principles and Implementation Guidelines on Privacy and Freedom of Expression.
The Principles for Responsible Investment.
The Responsible Business Alliance Code of Conduct for global supply chains.
The UN Standards of Conduct for Business tackling discrimination against Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans, & Intersex People.
The Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights.
The Women’s Empowerment Principles.

Finally, we believe that the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and International Human Rights Instruments provide direction for a just and sustainable world. While BSR believes these principles, standards, and guidelines support our mission and vision, we maintain an open membership policy.

Our Engagement with Policy Makers and Standards Setters

BSR’s three decades of experience working with member companies and other partners informs our insights into the role of laws, regulations, and standards in the pursuit of a just and sustainable world.

We use our voice to impact the future of business conduct by making formal submissions to policy, regulatory, and standards setting processes that are relevant to our mission and vision.

We are at a moment in evolution of the just and sustainable business field where BSR’s perspective—which emphasizes impact, moving from ambition to action, and seeing the connections between issues—is increasingly important to achieving the world we want.

Here you can find BSR recent submissions. While these submissions are informed by our work with member companies, BSR maintains a policy of not acting as a representative of its membership.

BSR undertakes these activities in a manner consistent with our status as a US 501(c)3 non-profit organization, which allows for engagement in policy advocacy, while prohibiting political campaigning and placing some limits on lobbying.

February 14, 2023

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