For the session recording: Click HereThe importance of responsible business practices has been heightened by the devastating consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. While some businesses have acted responsibly, ensuring that their workers’ salaries are paid and labour rights respected, others have resorted to cost-cutting, de-prioritizing respect for human rights standards in trying to protect their bottom line. Even more disconcertingly, the COVID-19 crisis may yet prove to be a dress rehearsal for the risks and negative impacts that may be wrought by climate-induced disasters that are on the horizon.
The growing reach and impact of business enterprises have given rise to a debate about the roles and responsibilities of such actors with regard to human rights and have led to the placement of business and human rights on the UN agenda. This session will focus on entrepreneurship for sustainable development, which is a multilevel phenomenon connecting social, environmental, and economic dimensions between entrepreneurial processes, market transformations, as well as large-scale societal developments. Modern concept of entrepreneurship is all about exercising creativity in business activities, product development, process development, problem solutions, and change management at large (Robinson, 2004). The concept of social entrepreneurship is where an entrepreneur will exercise innovation for a noble cause mostly for socio-economic development and environmental protection. The most simplified form of the concept is “entrepreneurship and innovation for sustainability - business with a cause” (Abrahamsson, 2006). This warrants voluntary actions for pro-active change in business practices through innovative solutions of problem or exploring opportunities on poverty, health and sanitation, recycling, world peace and justice, human security issues etc. The concept merges entrepreneurship with social and ecological development. Sustainability concept refers to entrepreneurial or intrepreneurial approaches that aids an integrated development of social, environmental, and economic issues that help an organisation to continue its business for the long run (Schaltegger & Burritt, 2005; Whiteman, Walker, & Perego, 2013).
This session aims to:
- Discuss the potential of social entrepreneurship as a possible solution to sustainable development challenges.
- Encapsulate how policymakers can directly support entrepreneurship for sustainable development and future generations.
- Show how entrepreneurs may pursue economic viability and at the same time contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by reducing inequality, enhancing social cohesion and tackling environmental challenges.
- Strengthen access to justice and access to adequate remedies for victims of business-related human rights abuses.
- Provide advice to entrepreneurs on how to assess and address human rights risks in their supply chains.
Additional Background document link:
The Rights of Future Generations, A New Legal HumanismSession organized by Raeed Roshan Ali, Precious Plastic Fiji.
