The fact is that corporate social responsibility initiatives are about more than improving your company’s reputation. Responsibility is the key word here: there are areas of human activity where we have a responsibility to make a contribution, and to take it seriously.
Our Project REEFrame is a good example: Freestyle Divers began as primarily a dive training business, but in the course of our work we became aware of our responsibility towards the coral reefs of the UAE. Diving is a core part of what we do, but we must never forget that it is our moral duty to take care of the environment, and this is our particular area, the part of the global environment where we can make a real difference.
This is where corporate sustainability and corporate responsibility meet in a very real struggle for ecological survival and we cannot overstate the importance of playing our part in the restoration of coral reefs.
What Are Corporate Social Responsibility Programs All About?
Coral reefs are important and must be saved. That’s it in a nutshell. And this can be done. We as a Dubai dive company have the skills to carry out the work. Our marine biologists have the knowledge and insights to know what needs to be done and how to do it.
That makes it our responsibility, or rather we have chosen to stand up and take responsibility for it. Whoever or whatever is ultimately to blame for the ongoing degradation of the coral reefs around the UAE, something needs to be done to save them, and we are doing it. Not just on our own, mind you; we rely on the input of many other individuals, corporate bodies, and government agencies, but our communal aim is simple: to save the coral reefs.
Sustainability is in many ways a 21st-century word. It may have existed far longer, but its current prominence in our vocabulary is due to the realisation that it identifies something that might previously have been overlooked. To sustain the planet is to ensure it can continue to function as it was designed and created to do. Sustainability only enters the equation when the future of something is called into question and our awareness of the future of the Earth only came into focus relatively recently.
Previous generations paid scant regard to the future, with an out-of-sight, out-of-mind attitude that saw the environment polluted because the damage was not visible. Exhaust fumes disappeared into the sky like effluent into the rivers and plastic into the sea. It was only when scientists began to detect signs of damage that the concept of sustainability was introduced.
Along the way, coral reefs were damaged, directly and indirectly, through human contact and climate change, and whether mankind understood what was happening or not, the world knew something had to change. Many things had to change, in fact, and various people and groups had to take responsibility.
