Responsible Business

CDA helps companies to improve their social impacts, support development in communities they affect, and operate in ways that strengthen their relationships with those communities. CDA works on a bi-lateral partnership basis with individual companies, and also works in multi-stakeholder initiatives to advance public understanding of corporate social impacts and their mitigation. CDA is a thought leader on business and conflict issues and has authored or contributed to influential guidance, such as the UN Global Compact’s Guidance on Responsible Business in Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas and IPIECA’s Creating Successful, Sustainable Social Investment, and the Preventing Conflict in Exploration tool.

CDA’s work on Responsible Business began in 2000 with the launch of the Corporate Engagement Project (CEP). CEP performed 16 asset-level field assessments around the world between 2000-2009, primarily with extractive industries companies. These included over 2000 individual and group consultations, culminating in the publication of the book Getting It Right: Making Corporate-Community Relations Work. 

CDA is currently engaged in a learning project about the ways in which violence affects small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and how SMEs affect violence, in partnership with the universities of Oslo, Los Andes in Colombia, and Stellenbosch, and Peace Research Institute Oslo.

CDA is a member of the Voluntary Principles Initiative, a multi-stakeholder initiative involving governments, companies, and NGOs that promotes implementation of a set of principles to guide companies in the energy and extractive industries on providing security for their operations in a manner that respects human rights.