In last week's CSR news....

For those who wondered whether the UN Global Compact had any “teeth,” last week it de-listed several hundred members for failing to file their COP (Communication on Progress) reports. SocialFunds.com featured two interviews with Georg Kell, executive director of Global Compact, about the de-listings and about new alliances to facilitate better COP reporting in the future.

BusinessWeek ran a cover story on The Organic Myth, claiming that “pastoral ideals are getting trampled as organic food goes mass market”; an article in The Independent likewise reports rapid growth in the organic food industry, as the Ethical Foods Boom Tops £2bn a Year in the UK.

And this year's Nobel Peace prize went to Muhammed Yunus and the microfinance bank he started, Grameen Bank, which led the surge in microfinance lending since the 1970s. He helped show that lending to the poor was not only a sustainable strategy for helping many would-be entrepreneurs out of poverty, but also that repayment rates were much higher than many had assumed - and so microfinance wasn't such a bad business after all.