Chapter VI Chapeau

Enterprises play a key role in advancing sustainable economies and can contribute to delivering an effective and progressive response to global, regional and local environmental challenges, including the urgent threat of climate change. Within the framework of laws, regulations and administrative practices in the countries in which they operate, and in consideration of relevant international agreements, principles, objectives, and standards, enterprises should conduct their activities in a manner that takes due account of the need to protect the environment, and in turn workers, communities and society more broadly, avoids and addresses adverse environmental impacts and contributes to the wider goal of sustainable development. Enterprises can be involved in a range of adverse environmental impacts. These include, among others:

a) climate change;
b) biodiversity loss;
c) degradation of land, marine and freshwater ecosystems;
d) deforestation;
e) air, water and soil pollution;
f) mismanagement of waste, including hazardous substances

Important differences across environmental impacts are outlined in the commentary to this chapter, including with respect to climate change and how an individual enterprise’s relationship to such impacts should be considered in the context of relevant frameworks.
In particular, enterprises should: