Johannesburg - Eskom made it onto a list of the top eight global companies at Davos yesterday, although it was for all the wrong reasons.
At the Public Eye Awards, which is held in Davos at a location down the road from the World Economic Forum’s conference hall, Greenpeace Switzerland shortlisted Eskom for the annual Public Eye Award. The award is given to the company that is judged to have done the most social and/or environmental harm as a result of irresponsible business practices during the previous 12 months.
The Jury Award went to American textile retail giant Gap for “steadfastly refusing to contribute to effective reforms in the textile industry”, said a statement issued by Greenpeace and the Berne Declaration (EvB).
“Despite the most serious industrial disaster that the country [Bangladesh] has ever seen, the collapse of the Rana Plaza Factory, which left over 1 100 dead and countless people injured, the American textile giant Gap shamelessly refuses, even to this day, to sign the legally binding agreement, ‘Accord on fire and building safety in Bangladesh’,” Bangladeshi labour activist Kalpona Akter said yesterday at the awards function.
Akter added that Gap still refused to make a contractual commitment to work with their suppliers and local and international trade unions to ensure that repairs were made and workers had the right to refuse dangerous work.
The People’s Award, which was decided on the basis of 280 000 online votes, went to Russian oil company Gazprom for the arrest of the Arctic 30.
Kumi Naidoo, the executive director of Greenpeace International, said Gazprom, which was the first company to pump oil from beneath the Arctic Ocean, had an appalling safety record on land. He described Gazprom’s Arctic drilling plans as reckless and inept.
“Due to the extreme conditions like temperatures down to minus 50ºC, ice packs and permafrost, violent storms and long dark periods, drilling in the Arctic is a very risky operation,” Naidoo said. “Gazprom approaches this challenge with an inadequate emergency plan and also insists on utilising out-of-date technology.”
Eskom made it onto the short list because of its “environmentally unsound practices”, Makoma Lekalakala of Earthlife Africa Johannesburg said.
Bobby Peek, the director at environmental group groundWork, said Eskom “is destroying South Africa”.
In evidence provided to Public Eye, it was stated that Eskom held a 95 percent monopoly on energy production and that about 90 percent of the country’s electricity was generated through coal-fired power stations, “an energy source whose entire life-cycle has serious impacts on people’s health and is known as one of the largest contributors to climate change”. - Business Report