Global Compact International Yearbook 2013
176
Dr. Kurt Bock,
Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors
of BASF SE
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Mr. Bock, in April 2012 you were appointed by the UN Secretary-
General Ban Ki-moon as a new member of the UN Global Compact
Board. What are the main reasons for BASF’s engagement in the UN
Global Compact?
Kurt Bock:
As a founding member of the UN Global Compact in
2000,
we strongly support the role of the UN Global Compact as a
peer-learning and dialogue platform. By combining high-level com-
mitment with hands-on learning at the local level, the UN Global
Compact has gathered experience with concrete best practices in the
area of sustainability, and it has a unique competence in the field
of facilitating multistakeholder dialogue and projects.
BASF is also participating in the LEAD platform of the UN Global Compact.
What is your experience with the initiative so far, and what are your current
priorities as a LEAD company?
We welcomed the opportunity of becoming more active in sharing
our experiences with other Global Compact members, when the
UN Global Compact launched its LEAD platform in 2011. After a
two-year pilot phase, LEAD is now focusing on a few workstreams
more intensively. BASF is currently engaged in two workstreams:
One deals with the post-2015 development process of the UN. Here,
the UN Global Compact is asked to bundle and bring in the perspec-
tives of participating companies. The other workstream deals with
integrated reporting.
The term “integrated reporting” seems to be on everyone’s lips at the moment.
Your company has been publishing an integrated report since 2007. Why did
BASF decide to do this?
We aim to demonstrate how sustainability contributes to the long-
term success of our company. As the first large German company,
we have documented our economic, environmental, and social
performance and provide specific examples to demonstrate the in-
terdependencies between financial and non-financial information.
We have made progress toward a fully integrated report, but there
is still potential to further integrate our reporting.