Corporations can have enormously detrimental effects on the environment. Oil spills are some of the most conspicuous examples, but industries, as varied as chemical manufacturing, mining, agriculture, and fishing, can do permanent damage to local ecosystems. Climate change can also be attributed in large part to corporations. While their responsibility is hard to untangle from that of the consumers who demand electricity and transportation, it is difficult to deny that many corporations have profited from the deterioration of the global environment.

In many cases, harm to the environment and harm to vulnerable communities go together indigenous groups in the Amazon rainforest, for example, have been decimated and even wiped out, both intentionally and unintentionally, to make room for logging, cattle ranching, gold mining, oil and gas drilling, and hydroelectric power generation Companies can invest in local communities to offset the negative impact their operations might have.

As in the carbon market the policy that many modern corporates take is to measure, reduce, and offset. Corporate Social Responsibility (or CSR) sits at heart of this policy. Its actions are more than just greenwashing or the triple bottom line: social, environmental, and economic or “people, planet, profit.” it is a genuine strategy that recognizes that to be a global player means you need to be ‘world responsible’.