If “corporate social responsibility” is to be more than a brilliant strategy for compelling companies to follow the dictates of “progressive” pressure groups, it must apply defensible ethical principles to all organizations. That is not now the case.
The current system targets companies for pollution, carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, climate change and other transgressions. A host of activists, academics, journalists, lawyers, politicians, regulators, judges and Hollywood producers help ferret out wrongdoers – actual, alleged and fictitious.
Where the wrongs are real, and the ethical guidelines are valid, society is well served. That this is not always the case is well documented. But there is another, more serious problem with CSR.
Its guidelines are often malleable, politically motivated and applied only to for-profit corporations.
If an accident kills wildlife or people, the law and basic ethics require that punishment is meted out and restitution made. But when it comes to policies and programs that sicken and kill millions of parents and children a year, society and the CSR warriors are not just silent. They see little reason why government agencies or multinational activist corporations should be held to the same standards of ethics, honesty, transparency or accountability as for-profit companies.
There may be no better example than malaria, to illustrate why they should be.
More than 2 billion people worldwide are at risk of getting this disease, and 350-500 million contract it every year, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria kills up to a million African children annually, making it the continent’s biggest killer of children under age five.
In Uganda alone, a nation of 30 million people, 60 million cases of malaria caused 110,000 deaths in 2005. In its Apac District, a person is likely to be bitten 1,560 times a year by mosquitoes infected with malaria parasites. The disease also perpetuates poverty (sick people can’t work) and increases deaths from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, diarrhea and malnutrition.
Controlling and eradicating this serial killer ought to be a global priority. But far too many organizations fail to take sufficient measures, while others actively oppose critically needed interventions.
UNICEF partners with Malaria No More to raise money from donors, distribute long-lasting insecticide-treted bednets and educational materials, provide anti-malarial drugs, and save lives. “Sometimes” they organize teams to spray insecticides on the inside walls of houses, to “kill the female mosquito after she feeds on a person” (and frequently infects him or her). Under “some special circumstances,” they support treating mosquito breeding sites, if the larvacides are “environmentally friendly.”
All these interventions will help reduce the disease and death tolls. They will garner plaudits from environmentalists and CSR activists. But there is no way such limited measures will result in No More Malaria. Unless and until they include outdoor spraying to control mosquitoes and DDT to keep them out of houses, they will not even come close to reducing malaria cases and deaths to what a moral person would deem tolerable levels: ie, close to zero.
Widespread distribution of insecticide-treated nets cut malaria deaths in half in Kenya, at least in the short run, when regular compliance was monitored. But that means 15,000 people are still dying each year. For Uganda, a 50% reduction via nets would mean 30,000 million cases and 55,000 deaths.
If the United States had Uganda’s malaria rates, we would have 600,000,000 cases and 1,100,000 deaths per year. Halving that would result in “only” 300,000,000 cases and 550,000 deaths annually. One would hope that not even Pesticide Action Network would deem that “acceptable.”
The US conducts aerial spraying on a regular basis – and uses Air Force tanker aircraft to spray insecticides after hurricanes – to prevent West Nile virus, which kills about 100 Americans a year. That’s one-third of what malaria kills in Uganda each day!
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