There have been at least three interesting developments over the past month in the area of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting by companies based in developing countries, or so-called “emerging markets”.

In late January, the Social Investment Research Analyst Network (SIRAN) and KLD launched a report on the state of CSR reporting in these countries, entitled “Sustainability Reporting In Emerging Markets”.

The report, which focused on companies in three sectors in seven countries, was meant not only as a benchmark for the level of corporate disclosure on ESG factors. It was also intended to “create an advocacy campaign to encourage further improvements in sustainability reporting”.

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An update to Liz Umlas’ July post: Mandatory CSR?

In September 2007, Ethical Corporation noted that Malaysia was also putting laws in place around corporate social responsibility (CSR) (and in September 2006, that country’s stock exchange began requiring public companies to report on CSR-related initiatives). Here is the link to the article in Ethical Corporation.

Over the past couple of months, China’s response to expanding concerns over the safety of products manufactured there has ranged from the execution of the former head of China’s food and drug administration, to a complete disavowal of any responsibility for enforcing foreign standards.

The latter is evident in a quotation that caught my eye in an Associated Press article, “Toys just 1 danger imported from China,” published on August 18th in response to Mattel’s latest announced recall of 19 million toys manufactured in China. When the China National Light Industry Council trade group hosted a panel on toy standards, Zhang Yanfen, secretary of the panel, claimed that “the quality of Chinese-made toys with American brands should be the responsibility of the American brand owner, not the Chinese manufacturer.”

But if that is the case, why has a company like Mattel, a leader in its industry with respect to setting and overseeing health, safety and environmental standards, been forced to recall millions of children’s toys due to lead paint and other safety issues?

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On Tuesday August 7th, I joined members of KLD’s staff and summer interns to pay a visit to the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship. There, we enjoyed presentations given about the Center and its affiliate, The Institute for Responsible Investment (IRI).

The Center and IRI are closely aligned with the mission of KLD. Both are doing some wonderful work and research in the areas of socially responsible investing and corporate responsibility. IRI is working on projects ranging from emerging markets to responsible property investment. In addition, IRI is wrapping up a study on non-financial reporting and the findings should be available in the first quarter of 2008. For more information about the Center and the IRI visit http://www.bcccc.net/.

Two recent articles point to some interesting developments - from some unlikely sources - regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR) and regulation.

In the UK, a report commissioned by Tomorrow’s Company concluded that companies should push for CSR laws. Ethical Performance noted in July that the report says that “while voluntary initiatives are the best way forward, ‘they subsequently need to be translated into national regulation that is then rigorously and uniformly enforced’.” Ethical Performance goes on to emphasize that most of the ten people on the panel that undertook the inquiry were from the business community, not from non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Also this month, Indonesia passed a law making CSR - broadly understood as the implementation of “environmental and social responsibility programs” - mandatory for companies, apparently becoming the first country to do so. Erin Lyon wrote in CSR Asia Weekly that business opposition to an earlier draft had led to a narrowing of the bill to cover only “companies with an impact on natural resources”.

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I was part of a panel discussion that addressed strategies for responsible international investing at last week’s Green Mountain Summit on Investor Responsibility. Since the focus of the panel was on the challenges and opportunities of both the research and product side of the equation, I thought that an informal overview of current retail mutual fund offerings available to U.S. investors would be a valuable framing exercise.

As sources for the overview I used the U.S. Social Investment Forum (SIF) directory, Morningstar’s socially responsible investing fund screener and the web sites of fund sponsors. I excluded alternate share classes when they existed and focused on funds available to U.S. investors that had global or international exposures, regardless of whether or not the exposure was explicitly part of the funds’ investment objective.

The results of this exercise are summarized below. I found just 14 funds for responsible investors that had global/international exposure, 10 of which had explicit mandates for such exposure. I included three funds that are not branded as socially responsible investing (SRI) funds, but would appeal to responsible investors because of their emphasis on environmental factors.

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I just skimmed this report in preparation for the OnValues/Who Cares Wins conference I’m attending this week, which is focusing on emerging market investment.

The report is from Association for Sustainable & Responsible Investment in Asia (ASrIA), and it’s on the lack of disclosure of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors by Asian companies listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. In addition to being a good overview, the report gives some idea of the proxy ESG indicators one can use when looking at companies that disclose very little information, such as staff turnover, expenditure on pollution control equipment, etc.