Sustainability, Policy, and Global Impact: A Comperative Analysis
Environmental Responsibilities and Future Perspective of Companies Within the Scope of the Global Compact
Elif Habıp, Ebru DoğanThe United Nations Global Compact is the largest corporate citizenship initiative and the most common voluntary responsibility project. This agreement also represents an organization that encourages companies to develop sustainable and socially responsible practices to spread a sustainable, common global development culture worldwide. The Compact sets forth ten fundamental principles in human rights, labor, environment, and anticorruption. The companies party to the compact work to make these principles a part of their business strategies, activities, and culture. Three of these principles are under the environmental heading. According to this, “business support for precautionary approaches to environmental issues; to support all kinds of activities and formations that will increase environmental responsibility; It is envisaged to support the development and dissemination of environmentally friendly technologies.” Global responsibility sharing is achieved through the cooperation established by gathering all participants, including companies that adopt these principles, under the umbrella of the United Nations Global Compact to achieve sustainable development goals. Within the scope of the contract, 16,786 companies worldwide, a total of 20,690 participants; In Turkey, there are 405 participants, 151 of which are companies. Turkey’s local network of the Global Compact offers a development, sharing, and cooperation platform for the sustainable development of Turkey with its multi-stakeholder member structure that includes non governmental organizations, universities, municipalities, and businesses that take responsibility for sustainable development. This study aims to highlight the environmental activities of companies in Turkey, identify the missing issues in sustainability studies on a universal scale, and make suggestions that will contribute to the circular economy with increasing environmental responsibility. In this context, a descriptive content analysis was conducted through the MAXQDA program. The findings were evaluated using the activities of Turkish companies within the scope of the United Nations Global Compact, in line with the said principles, and the activity reports and data prepared for these studies. According to the analysis results, various suggestions are made to the companies and other actors.
