Earlier this month, EO officially joined the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) as an affiliate member. ICCR is an alliance of faith-based and social value-driven groups that use investment management as a means of influencing positive change. As a member, EO will join a network of socially responsible businesses and investors who share the goal of encouraging better practices in corporate activity. An integral part of ICCR’s overarching mission is “facilitating development of strategic goals; [and] developing criteria to measure company progress.” The quantifiable and well-defined parameters of the EO100 Standard, make it a useful tool for investors to measure the social and environmental performance of oil and gas operations.
The growing movement of socially responsible investing or sustainable, responsible and impact investing (SRI) is an investment discipline that takes into account environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) criteria in the pursuit of competitive return on initial capital. This combination of commercial interests with social values is well aligned with EO’s approach to affecting positive change in the oil and gas industry. As energy has long been a favored space for both institutional and retail investment, relationships with the SRI community that could lead to stakeholder engagement in the oil and gas sector are a huge potential benefit to EO’s work.
"It is a privilege to join ICCR, an organization that has a long history of engendering change in corporate behavior in areas ranging from human rights and labor standards to health issues and environmental impacts," said EO's VP of Standards and Stakeholder Engagement, Soledad Mills. ICCR has a proven track record of working with numerous oil and gas companies to encourage transparency and accountability in their operations. In 1989, in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill, ICCR was instrumental in ensuring a swift and proportional response from the company. In the years since, ICCR has maintained a legacy of staunch constructive criticism and active investor engagement including during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico. Most recently, ICCR members along with members of the Investors Environmental Health Network (IEHN) released a comprehensive report on the risks involved in hydraulic fracturing.
At EO we are committed to steadily increasing collaboration and fostering strong partnerships with our existing supporters, as well as with new and different groups dedicated to promoting corporate responsibility in the oil and gas sector and beyond. In our efforts to engage with as many stakeholders as possible while minimizing the risks and maximizing the benefits of energy development, success has been and will continue to rely upon sharing information and pooling resources to build a cohesive community of corporate stewards.