Roberts Environmental Center

Annual Report Summary for Academic Year: 2008-2009

The Roberts Environmental Center published 8 student-researched industrial sector reports (listed in Appendix 10) analyzing the environmental and social disclosure and performance of several hundred of the world’s largest corporations. We also published a special report on the sustainability reporting of all 91 Fortune 1000 companies based in New York State. The Center also published one student-authored book on global climate change and its impacts on natural resources management. Additionally, the Center Director published two papers—derived from the Center’s work—in peer-reviewed technical journals.

In addition to continuing our ongoing production of industrial sector reports for Fortune Global 500 and Fortune 1000 companies, we have almost completed a report on all Fortune Global 500 corporations in China, and are going to include in it an essay on the state of sustainability activities in Chinese companies, written by SynTao, a Beijing-based company specializing in CSR reporting in China.

We are also addressing the issue of carbon neutrality and general sustainability at CMC by using the Fall EEP clinic to the analyze the sustainability activities and reporting of the US News and World Report top 50 liberal arts colleges (which includes all 5 of the Claremont Colleges). In the spring, the Center will similarly address the top 50 universities. These data will be published as regular PSI sector reports, and will also form the basis of the Center’s recommendations to CMC about ways to proceed on the President’s Committee on Sustainability.

It is the mission of the Roberts Environmental Center to:

• Provide students with a comprehensive and realistic understanding of today’s environmental issues, and the ways in which they are being and can be resolved.
• Identify, publicize, and encourage policies and practices that achieve economic and social goals in the most environmentally benign and protective manner.
• Encourage the appreciation, conservation, and stewardship of natural resources, particularly on public lands in Southern and Eastern California.

We accomplish the first of these through coursework, the EEP clinics, and the analysis of the sustainability reporting and performance of the world’s largest corporations. We accomplish the second by publishing and publicizing the results of the Center’s research into corporate responsibility. We have been approaching the third through summer student internships and research at the Burger Research Station at the eastern entrance to Yosemite National Park, but we have not been able to support students there for the past two summers..

The Center is staffed by a director and a research fellow. Twenty students will work regularly in the center in 2009-2010 (at least 4/hours per week per person)

The REC sponsors two EEP clinics each year which have grown in size over the years and now involve 15 or more students each semester. It also provides the vehicle for publishing the books produced by Biology 159 (Natural Resources Management) and Biology 165 (Advanced Topics in Environmental Biology)

The Center employed over 60 students in 2008-2009, all directed toward producing the Center’s Industrial Sector Sustainability Reports. It also supports 20-30 students a year in the EEP clinics.

Most of the Institute’s research, including industrial sector reports and books, is published by the Institute with students as coauthors. In summer 2009, the Center granted a $600 stipend to Bukola Jimoh (CMC’12) for a research work at a non-profit internship at “Friends of the Chicago River” working on its ecology management program.

The main goal is to sponsor environmental speakers at the Athenaeum within the limitations of the Center’s budget line item for honoraria. It sponsored four speakers in 2008-2009.

The Center also has been active in the 5-C environmental curriculum initiative, and in the CMC sustainability initiative.

The Institute conducts research on the environmental and social (“sustainability”) reporting of the world’s largest corporations. Our principle ongoing project is the sector-by-sector analysis of the material presented on the web sites of Fortune Global 500 and Fortune 1000 companies. In addition to presenting this information in sector reports—some 8 of them during the 2008-2009 academic year—we occasionally summarize the most significant findings in papers published in refereed technical journals, and did so in two such papers in 2008-2009.[1]^,[2]

The Roberts Environmental Center is highly visible world-wide in the field of corporate sustainability reporting. It is the foremost analyst of such reporting and has been for a number of years. In addition to the press it receives (much more of which is expected to be forthcoming with the recent involvement of CMC’s PR group and consultants), it communicates frequently with executives of many of the corporations it analyzes, such communication often constituting the first awareness these people have of the College. Almost all interactions with the corporate community have been strongly positive, and the Center has been instrumental in increasing the level of corporate reporting significantly in response to release of its draft reports.