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Gold/Mining/Energy : TLM.TSE Talisman Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tomas who wrote (909)	5/30/2000 10:13:00 PM
From: Tomas	Respond to of 1713

Talisman: Corporate social responsibility is still a vague notion From The Globe & Mail, May 30 ... Human rights problems have plagued Canadian companies in resource sectors for years, as Talisman Energy's recent experiences outline. Although Jim Buckee, CEO of Talisman, recently announced at the company's meeting in Calgary that profit had increased 5,000 per cent to $206-million from last year's first quarter, several dozen demonstrators gathered to protest the company's continuing involvement in a controversial oil project in Sudan. To address the charges that the company's activities are fuelling the decades-old civil war in Sudan, Talisman agreed to develop a human rights monitoring program within one year. That represents a victory of a sort for the various pension funds and rights activists, but the decision could ultimately prolong rather than address the question of what constitutes and how to measure socially responsible behaviour. Does the creation of jobs and community programs in an economically impoverished country properly negate the possibility of prolonging a civil war? Who gets to decide if Talisman, which is already a signatory to the International Code of Ethics for Canadian Business, has adequately lived up to a human rights code of conduct? Since the Canadian government has already declined to impose sanctions against Talisman's Sudan operations, is it realistic to expect that a new institution would have the sufficient legitimacy to force a company to change its business strategy? The Department of Foreign Affairs is planning to develop a program with the Canadian Petroleum Association for oil companies to better understand their social responsibilities. Greater awareness is always good, but these companies could use some advice on how to convert that into a useful set of social performance benchmarks. Unfortunately, corporate social responsibility is something people spend a lot of time talking about, but no one is willing to do anything about it. Jacob Park, a fellow of the U.S. Environmental Leadership Program, is a Washington-based analyst who specializes in corporate social responsibility issues. Full article: globeandmail.com