Croatian Business Council for Sustainable Development

This month, CSR Europe interviews Mirjana Matesic, Director of the Croatian Business Council for Sustainable Development, who assesses the awareness towards CSR issues among Croatian businesses, as well as interactions between the public and the private sector. She also looks into the "Index of CSR" project the CBCSD has carried out with the Croation Chambre of Commerce, and eventually gives an overview sketch of CSR developments by 2020. 

  

The Croatian Business Council for Sustainable Development's mission is to contribute to a better understanding and implementation of Sustainable Development in the Croatian Private sector. Based on this, how would you rate the awareness towards issues of Sustainability and CSR among Croatian businesses?

Well, I can say that we have come a long way from the day we have started in 1995. Sustainable development and CSR were not familiar terms in Croatia back than. Later, for years, CSR was considered as the synonym for philanthropy so we had a lot of work to do. Today, I could say that most of the business people understand the basis about these terms but we are still long way from successful implementation. Most of them still use CSR term as a way of self promotion. I believe that we would have much more success in implementation if the companies saw clear benefits for themselves. We sill need to work a lot in creating transparent and responsible framework for business to be able to invest in CSR and prosper.

The similar situation is with sustainable development. It is the term most people don't understand and it is being misused and mixed up with CSR. The situation is changing rapidly though. Since the beginning of the year Croatia has a new President who is very interested in sustainable development issues and is talking about it often what is very important in creating perception that it is something to look at. The President has appointed his business council and has asked me as a director of Croatian BCSD to join as sustainable development expert. This is very big success for our organization but it is also a big step in promoting these issues in public. Soon after, Croatian Employers Association has asked us to assist them in organizing their yearly conference for almost a thousand business people with CSR as major topic. These are really big steps for us and are confirmation that our efforts are finally paying off.

 

What is the role played by the Croatian Government in Sustainable Development? What are the main achievement of the Croatian Business Council for Sustainable Development in developing the dialogue between the private and the public sector?

I already mentioned our success with the President of Croatia. I can't say though that we have the same success with our Government. We would like to see our Government express more interest and support for these issues. They are still supportive on declarative level but when it comes to real action, we would like to see more. The Ministry of environmental protection, which is in charge for sustainable development has prepared SD Strategy for Croatia . The strategy is prepared consulting the EU strategy and it has all the main issues covered but we are arguing that these issues are not transposed into the sectoral strategies. As I understood, EU had the same problem after the first EU SD Strategy in 2001 but this problem was resolved. I believe that we will experience the same pathway, we just have to work hard and be patient. I am a member of the working group that is preparing Action plan for the Sustainable Production and Consumption chapter and I hope I will be able to contribute to the quality of the Plan. The implementation of it will be the big test for the Government.

 

In Collaboration with the Croatian Chamber of Commerce, HR BCSD began a project called Index of CSR. On the 16th of December 2009, the results of this project have been presented and a Panel discussion on the "Perspective of CSR in Croatia" was held. Could you tell us a bit more about the awards? What is the feedback from the discussion?

The CSR Index Award is the methodology we have developed together with Croatian Chamber of Economy, using knowledge of a dozen local experts in various fields. We have also used different international methodologies and as a result we have produced a questionnaire of about 120 questions which covers all main aspects of CSR implementation. What is specific about this methodology is that it is suitable for Croatian companies, the questions are measurable, verifiable and relevant for Croatia. Also the questionnaire has software application so the companies are filling it on line. We are very proud of this project, it took us a long time to develop it and now, after second Award ceremony that took place in December of 2009, I have to say that I am little disappointed in the number of companies that participated. Our reality is that there is complete lack of interest for this kind of topics. While any other business award is being covered in all news programs and paper editions, our award is almost not present. This sends a clear message to the business that it is not something worth fighting for. Therefore, all the companies that do participate are those that really believe and engage in CSR. Of course, it is not just the media we also need to put more energy into this project. Therefore we have applied and received EU grant money to build the National CSR network. It is a two year project within which we plan to invest lot of efforts in business education as well as promotion of the Award itself.

Because of this lack of interest among the general public, media and also most of the companies, the topic of our round table was the future of the CSR where we have raised the question of what are the conditions that need to be met in order to start implementation of CSR in our business.

 

How do you see the Croatian Business approach to CSR evolve in 10 years?

First I have to say that 10 years from now, I don't see difference between CSR in Croatian and European business. Globalization is the fast process, and in 10 years, I believe that the values will be the same wherever we go. I also believe that the environmental pressure and population issues will be so strong that the CSR as we are seeing today will become mainstream business model. It will be the minimum standard to keep competitiveness and market share. Consumers will be more and more sensitive on the externalities each business leaves behind and any company that doesn't consider these issues will not succeed in the long-term. Therefore we will experience fast development of the CSR topics and standards because companies will compete in applying them. I firmly believe that CSR has future. And this future is very close.

 

 

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