Roles and Responsibilities of Businesses and Government in Addressing GHG Emissions

Business and Government in Global Context
question no. 2Student Name
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Executive summary
Although social and environmental responsibility has been advocated increasingly since past
few decades and is generally employed by corporations worldwide, agreeing upon the fact
that how it should be handled or defined and implemented remains contentious topic for
debate among businesses, government and society. This gap has further increased pressure
among businesses to assume greater social and environmental responsibility where they are
forced to align with societal norms before generating economic returns. To remedy this issue,
the following essay have presented definition of social responsibility along with recognising
major environmental hazards occurring due to GHG emissions. In depth knowledge of the
issue will help in assuming which roles shall be handled by government and by businesses to
address the issue identified in essay. After underlining benefits and drawbacks behind
superimposing of non-economic goals in businesses, voluntary approach undertaken by
businesses for maintaining social responsibility shows more desirable in this essay.

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Introduction
The trend towards managing and measuring greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in an
international level is not reducing, even after several countries and environmental
managements are approaching the problem with diversified view points and different scale of
vigor in recent years. Along with a significant rise seen in managing and measuring GHG
emissions, many organizations around the globe are expected to envisage a superior level of
audit reports and independent declaration (Boyd, et al., 2013). The purpose of this essay is to
identify and discuss GHG emission issue for which businesses are been pressurized to
assume greater social responsibility while addressing environmental issues. Along with it,
this essay will present roles and responsibilities that must be adopted by businesses and
government to handle issues related to GHG emissions by giving sufficient reasoning behind
undertaking such roles. Leading organizations in every sector are undertaking critical actions
in both outside and inside their fences to reduce their own operational emissions to become
more robust in handling inevitable climatic impacts ( Yu & Lee , 2017). Nevertheless, to
assume that whether businesses must be expected to undertake arising GHG emissions issues
responsibility that are traditionally held by governments or it should be a voluntary step, this
essay will first evaluate GHG impacts on business practices and examine to what level does it
makes feasible to stick voluntarily approach or being held by government to meet sustainable
development (SD) and socially responsible actions.
Although the concept behind social responsibility has been well documented in
literature since past few decades and is usually employed by corporate organizations globally,
the gap has further created issues for organizations as they are continuously forced to align
with societal and environmental norms while operating for achieving economic goals. To find
an ultimate remedy for this issue, the following definition has been presented by Smith
(2011) “Corporate social responsibility is a business system that enables the production and

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distribution of wealth for the betterment of its stakeholders through the implementation and
integration of ethical systems and sustainable management practices” (p. 04). Since post
World War II, many concepts and proposed definitions were highlighted amongst workplaces
by business practitioners and environmentalists. The outcomes seen in key segments like
production and wealth distribution along with maintaining sustainable development strategies
and ethical business operations validates that business practitioners have started accepting
their participation for undertaking social responsibility and steps for addressing
environmental issues.
The investments and initiatives undertaken by major countries and prominent
governmental laws includes UN’s Global Compact, EU’s mandatory CSR and Public
Transnational hard law that have been adopted by well-known private companies. While
showing significant concern towards investments made on socially responsible practices,
further defining the terms related to environmental issues as identified in the essay are also
important. The issues in environment and sustainability ranges from economic stability to
corporate profitability, organisational health and safety to preservation of ecology etc.
Environmental issues while performing organisational practices have intimately involved
itself into social practices due to highly multifaceted dynamic structures followed by
organisations (Baer, n.d.). These systems further make ensuing environmentally friendly
practices more complex due to inherited ambiguity in issues and societal considerations. For
instance, it becomes difficult to evaluate which industry generated harmful gases that requires
to be addressed or who will view the prevailing issues that effects a particular set of
environmental management guidelines. Nevertheless, Sheehy (2015) argues that this is more
complex discussion due to growing concern seen among various number of authorities in
recent years and society adds further to the complexity in issues. But, the author further
added that due to this complexity, political agendas arise along with awakening of social