A similar report prepared by Natural Marketing Institute (NMI) suggested that many companies have identified very profitable ways of being good environmental stewards, allowing environmental issues to move from a "liability" to an "asset." The example most frequently cited is GE’s Ecomagination campaign, which has proven that selling green products can produce clear and substantial bottom-line results.

GE, like many other major retailers, was quick to capitalize on growing consumer desire for sustainable products and services.

Jargon aside, more companies are catching on to the notion that one can do well by doing good, and catering to the sustainable market segment is picking up steam in North America and Europe, and in parts of Asia.

But Corporate Responsibility in its broadest sense goes far beyond the short term market gains of catering to high end consumers that can afford to buy environmentally sound products and services.

Companies that are involved in major resource development activities or which are active in the developing world see a more fundamental dimension of corporate responsibility, namely contributing to the necessities of life that are in short supply to over two thirds of the world’s population -- clean drinking water, safe cities, adequate housing, meaningful employment, access to health and education, and most importantly stable food supply.

The U.N. predicts that by 2025, two-thirds of the earth’s population will be living in areas suffering from scarcity of water, due to growing populations, rapid economic development, droughts and changes caused by global warming. Already there are fears of massive starvation in many parts of the world due to skyrocketing prices and plummeting food supplies, in part driven by rising energy costs.

Responsible corporate leaders see these conditions as a call to action simply because no one benefits from chaos and no company can survive in conditions of high civil unrest, destabilized government structures, inequitable markets, and starvation.

The World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD), a Geneva-based international coalition of leading corporations, is committed to the proposition that free markets, the end of poverty, environmental responsibility and corporate citizenship are the keys to a sustainable future for mankind. This is not utopian rhetoric, but the hardnosed reality that business can only prosper when the world prospers.