January 27, 2010, Davos, Switzerland — The Public Eye Awards' Committee announced today that the Polaris Institute's nomination of the CEO Water Mandate has won in the Greenwash category.
Since 2005, at a ceremony outside the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland, the Public Eye Awards have been given out to corporations that have exhibited irresponsible and damaging behaviour. At this year’s event Nobel Prize Laureate Joseph Stiglitz will be giving the keynote address.
In 2009, Polaris submitted a nomination of the United Nations' CEO Water Mandate in the 'Greenwash' category for its role in facilitating greater control of water resources by multinational corporations while simultaneously 'greenwashing' socially and environmentally damaging corporate behavior.
“Not only does the Global Compact and the CEO Water Mandate facilitate more corporate control of water,” said Richard Girard, “but, it makes the United Nations an apologist and enabler of corporate greenwashing.”
Established under the auspices of the United Nations’ Global Compact, the CEO Water Mandate is a voluntary, non-binding, public-private partnership. Under the guise of environmental stewardship, the CEO Water Mandate provides multinational corporations--including well-documented environmental abusers such as Coca Cola, Dow Chemical, Nestlé, Royal Dutch Shell and Suez--with a platform to directly influence governments in order to secure continued access to water. As a result, these companies are allowed to conceal their socially and environmentally damaging operations with the blue flag of the United Nations.
“The United Nations has no business facilitating corporate water grabs,” said Tony Clarke, Director of the Polaris Institute. “Instead, the UN should return to the mandate they abandoned some 35 years ago, effectively regulating the operations of transnational corporations around the world.”
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The Public Eye Awards provide a critical counterpoint to the annual World Economic Forum that takes place in Davos every January.
The Polaris Institute is a public interest research and advocacy organization based in Canada.
Contact: Richard Girard, Mobile: (011) 41 76 309 5490