Ten years after publishing its first Agenda for Action in 2002, the Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI) has launched its 2012 CSI Progress Report. Philippe Fonta, managing director of the Cement Sustainability Initiative, takes a look back at the cement industry’s progress towards delivering on this agenda and ahead to the changing business and social environment in which it operates.

Over a decade ago, a group of leading cement companies came together and created the Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI) under the auspices of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). Thus began a journey based on a voluntary, continuous improvement approach –focused on making the cement industry and business in general more sustainable. This approach epitomises the spirit and goals of the WBCSD, an organisation founded following the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro 20 years ago. The ‘CSI Progress Report,’ launched in June 2012 at the Rio+20 Summit, examines how the CSI has turned its words into actions over the first decade of existence.