How do we vote Talisman off the Island?

Company's corporate responsibility reporting a sham

By: Paul Pellizzari

  People who believe oil development is fueling the civil war in Sudan would be better off if Talisman Energy Inc. had never heard the words "corporate social responsibility" (CSR). After three years of pressure from shareholder activists and media criticism, the company has finally responded with a Corporate Social Responsibility Report 2000: Sudan Operations.
  This report is a sham. Its appropriation of CSR language and ideas is an insult to those activists, researchers and progressive shareholders working to extract credible information from companies.
  During a year in which Talisman's profits have grown five-fold, its critics maintain that the company is paying huge royalties to a military dictatorship that has been killing millions of people in southern Sudan for more than 40 years. At the company's annual shareholder meeting on Tuesday, May 1, activist shareholders, led by the Inter-Church Coalition on Africa (ICCAF) and Taskforce for Churches and Corporate Responsibility (TCCR) asked Talisman CEO Jim Buckee why the Sudan report was so badly done. Last year they demanded independent verification on Talisman's compliance with internationally accepted standards of human rights. They also wanted to know what steps it would take to ensure that money from oil development did not finance the civil war. What they got this year was a report that uses the language of CSR to evade accountability. Instead of just ignoring its critics, as it has done in the past, Talisman is now trying to obscure what they say.

Instead of just ignoring its critics, as it has done in the past, Talisman is now trying to obscure what they say

The Report: Talisman's move from ignoring to obscuring
  CSR reporting aims to provide information that makes corporations responsible for the impacts their businesses have on communities and the environment. It deals with records on pollution, resident displacement, community engagement, and human rights abuses. For more than a decade, groups in Europe, Canada, the US and Australia have worked to create credible methods for reporting. Talisman's Sudan Operations report claims management has "initiated acceptable corporate responsibility practices." Don't be fooled, it hasn't.
  The report and the process that produced it contain a verification statement from auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), so they can claim some degree of independent verification. Why is this not enough? It isn't because the company's Sudan Operating Principles were developed behind closed doors. No public consultations occurred before reporting decisions were made. The terms of corporate responsibility evaluation proposed by critics were ruled off-limits, replaced with a much narrower set. PwC's signed statement says that it only interviewed a few stakeholder groups in Sudan and Nairobi, but it was not able to interview them all freely and independently (some were watched by national security personnel). According to the report itself, verification "in many cases does not extend to verifying the outcomes of the policies and procedures introduced" (p9). No independent human rights monitor is cited, and no commitment to invite such a monitor is made. According to a UK-based NGO, Christian Aid, the auditor, PwC, stated that it has not conducted an in-depth study of the effects of either Talisman's presence or oil production. Among the facts it did verify were the many worthwhile "good works" of Talisman's philanthropy, community relations gestures that the company wants to people to look at instead of the relationship between oil development and war.
 

If Talisman's statements are not challenged, the entire movement for corporate social responsibility will suffer

  Talisman's report reveals little more than the company's desire to take credit for a limited verification process that, when compared with basic international CSR standards, is facile and improperly implemented. The company stated that it would be a positive western influence on its partners, but nothing has happened. For its military purposes, the government uses an airstrip built to serve the "oil infrastructure", and the company has tried to intervene, but has failed. Talisman cannot guarantee that facilities, planes and land equipment will not be used for military purposes. Nor can it ensure that the government will use oil money for human development in the south, as promised. If the company cannot admit that confronting its partners is ineffectual, it should not continue to justify its presence in the middle of the civil war. And, it should not use CSR ideas to do so.
  Everyone in CSR should worry about the effects of this report on people who are curious, but new to our ideas. If moderately concerned shareholders read this report, will they realize that it is all form and no content? If not, the damage to this movement, which works to make corporations more accountable, may prove enormous. But then again, maybe companies like Talisman wouldn't care about that either.

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Talisman Backgrounder
  In 1998 Talisman acquired interests in oil concessions in the Sudan. The business consortium that joins Talisman to the Sudan government, the Greater Nile Operating Company Limited (GNPOC), generates oil revenue of approximately $1 million per day. This money, critics say, is helping the government fund and expand its war efforts. Sudanese government leaders themselves have acknowledged that this money is used to purchase weapons and build munitions factories.
  The connections between oil and war have been detailed by several independent human rights investigations. Canadian government fact-finder, John Harker, reported that oil development infrastructure (roads, an airfield, water, electricity, medical care) help government forces launch attacks on civilians. The United Nations Special Rapporteur also said that oil development is contributing to the continuation of the war. In April 2001, a Canadian Ecumenical Mission to Sudan was invited to visit Sudan by the Sudan and New Sudan Councils of Churches. It met with Sudanese Church leaders who described the tactics of the Khartoum government as "genocidal."
  Last year, TCCR tabled a shareholder proposal that asked the company to issue an independently verified report and received an unprecedented 27% support, while the company's "look alike" proposal was passed with a solid majority. This April, the company released its Corporate Social Responsibility Report 2000: Sudan Operations.

Web sites:
Inter-Church Coalition on Africa (ICCAF)

Christian Aid Report, Scorched Earth, March 2001

Amnesty International (UK)

Amnesty International (Canada)

Harker Commission Report on mission to Sudan, February 2000

Human Rights Watch Report, March 2001

UN Special Rapporteur, (follow links for 57th Session, Commission on Human Rights)

Taskforce for Churches and Corporate Responsibility

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Paul Pellizzari is author of Ethics in a Grocery Cart (EthicScan, 1998) and co-author of Shopping with a Conscience (Wiley, 1996), two books on corporate social responsibility. He is the editor for theinvolvedfather.com (an on-line parenting magazine), a regular columnist for the Corporate Ethics Monitor, and a contributor of freelance articles on a variety of issues dealing with business's effects on society. From 1995 to 2000, he was director of research at EthicScan Canada.

Posted, May 07, 2001

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