On January 19, 2005, the Environmental Law Institute presented the first workshop sponsored by the ELI Center for Business Environmental Strategy, established to convene practitioners to examine issues of broad public and private interest facing corporate environmental and business leaders as well as governmental and non-governmental stakeholders. With a generous grant from the Starr Foundation, the Center launched a workshop series on key issues in corporate environmental strategy such as environmental disclosure requirements, supply network strategies, and product risk reduction, to name a few.
The agenda included an international panel of experts on environmental reporting requirements. The event kicked off the Center’s activities to coincide with the passage of the United Kingdom’s new business law, which requires corporations and boards to report significant environmental issues in their financial reports, and with the European Union’s switch to International Financial Reporting Standards, affecting thousands of firms across 25 European nations.
“We want to sponsor programs that dig deeper into issues facing businesses working to anticipate as well as respond to issues in environmental strategy. ELI will take a comparative approach that considers how issues are being dealt with outside the United States and seek to identify areas of common concern and common ground,” said Leslie Carothers, ELI President.