CSR360

Richard Welford is one of the founders and the chairman of CSR Asia based in Hong Kong. He is also a professor at the University of Hong Kong and a director of ERP Environment, a UK-based publisher.

Richard has twenty years of experience working in the fields of environmental management and social responsibility. He was one of the early pioneers in developing social audit and reporting methodologies with UK-based organisations such as The Body Shop, IBM and Eastern Electricity in the 1990s. Since then, his work has been increasingly Asian focused as a result of his current position as director of the Corporate Environmental Governance Programme at the University of Hong Kong. He has sat on the Swire Environmental Committee as an external adviser for the past four years and has undertaken consultancy work with a number of leading companies, including the MTR Corporation, Disney, CLP, Nike, Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, HP, HSBC, Citigroup and Adidas.

Richard’s work has had a strong emphasis on environmental sustainability and social justice. Richard has worked with Cathay Pacific and the Swire group developing a climate change strategy. He has also worked on policies and implementation plans covering conservation and biodiversity. For Shangri-La Hotels he is developing initiatives not only covering environmental sustainability but also aspects of human rights and local community engagement. He has been an advocate of human rights auditing as a means of ensuring social justice and has undertaken assessments of the Freeport Human Rights audit in Papua.