Petrobras and the UN Global Compact * Wilson Santarosa In October 2003 Petrobras adopted the principles of the UN Global Compact. The Compact is open to any company in the world and has two main objectives: To disseminate the practice of the ten business principles throughout the world; To catalyze its actions to support the UN initiatives. The principles are accepted worldwide and arranged around the themes of Human Rights, Working Conditions, Environment Protection and Anti-Corruption, the first three deriving from the following agreements: Universal Human Rights Declaration International Labor Organization Declaration on Fundamental Rights and Principles at Work Rio Declaration on Environment and Development The Global Compact is based on transparency and incentive to companies, workforce and civil society so that they begin and share substantial actions focusing on the practice of the Principles on which it is based, without being a corporate regulatory or controlling instrument. Today, approximately 1,500 companies from 55 countries have now joined the Global Compact, such as companies in the power area besides Petrobras, as follows: Amerada Hess, BP, China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., ENI, Gaz de France, Indian Oil Corp., Nexen, PetroCanada, Royal Dutch/Shell Group, Statoil and TotalFinaElf. Some of the top Brazilian companies and organizations that also joined are Avon, Banco Itaú, Belgo Mineira, Copel, Fiesp, Furnas, Abril Group, Klabin, Natura Cosmeticos S/A, Organizações Globo, Pulsar Informatica, Samarco, Shell Brasil, Telemig, Ethos Institute and Abrinq Foundation for the Child's Rights. The BMW.Williams Formula 1 team is not only sponsored by Petrobras but by another three companies, namely: Allianz Group, BMW AG and Hewlett-Packard. On joining, the company agrees to give an statement in support of the Compact, announcing it to its employees, shareholders, customers and suppliers for them to apply the ten principles to its corporate development program; to add these principles to the company's mission statement; to include the commitment to the Compact in the Petrobras Annual Report and other documents; to announce publicly this commitment by issuing press releases. Moreover, it must send a letter once a year to the United Nations General Secretary giving a concrete example of progress achieved or lessons learned when adopting the ten principles, to be registered on the Global Compact website. As a result of its joining the Global Compact, Petrobras was invited to participate in the 3rd Global Compact Learning Forum Meeting, organized in Minas Gerais by the Ethos Institute and Dom Cabral Foundation, from December 9 to 11, 2003. Its main theme was partnerships for development, expounding on the ways in which companies may contribute to the goal of reducing worldwide poverty levels by applying the principles recommended by the Global Compact. On that occasion, Petrobras presented Progefe as a case study, which is a clear example of a project that disseminates the concepts and precepts of Corporate Social (and Environmental) Responsibility, through the thousands of Petrobras suppliers of goods and services, in an effort to relate to an important group of the company stakeholders. More recently, Petrobras was invited to participate in the Global Compact Leaders Summit, chaired by Kofi Annan and organized by the UN at its New York headquarters, where 500 corporate leaders from around the world spent one day discussing the future of the Global Compact. The President of Brazil was the only politician invited to present his ideas on solving worldwide socioenvironmental problems, and how companies can and should integrate the joint effort required to achieve it. On this occasion, the tenth principle on Anti-Corruption was approved. In early 2004, the United Nations, aware of the need to create the bases for forming new world business leaders who would administrate their companies also by adopting the concepts of Corporate Social Responsibility, signed an agreement, through the Global Compact Office in New York, with efmd - European Foundation for Management Development, an institution based in Brussels, Belgium, with approximately 500 business school members, in order to develop the first methodology of its kind in the world to be applied to forming new global leaders. The idea is to choose top companies and business schools, strongly committed to the issues relating to Corporate Social (and Environmental) Responsibility, to work together in developing this methodology, and who will hold six meeting, one every two months October 2004 on. Petrobras was invited to participate in the selection along with another 1200 companies from all over the world, and was chosen together with Aviva (UK), Barloworld (South Africa), Groupe Caisse d'Epargne (France), IBM (USA) and Telefónica (Spain). The others will be announced by mid-August. It is possible that Petrobras and the Dom Cabral Foundation (selected as business school) will be the only institutions to represent Latin America in this pioneer effort. * Wilson Santarosa is Executive Manager of Institutional Communication, Petrobras More: THE TEN PRINCIPLES OF THE GLOBAL COMPACT « back