Case Study on Wilderness Safaris: Innovations Consistent with CSR 2.0

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has too often been implemented as symbolic alternatives to direct regulations. As a result, CSR 1.0 has often failed to generate meaningful real-life changes. This case study examines a private sector ecotourism company, Wilderness Safaris, and how measures recently implemented are suitable to deliver radically better societal contributions and environmental improvements. Such measures include long-term meaningful investments in, and proactive involvement for, community development and biodiversity conservation. Such governance innovations and practices are consistent with the new concept of Corporate Sustainability and responsibility (CSR 2.0). The company’s philosophy of building sustainable economies around nature protection goes beyond the legal requirements of business impact minimisation, while ensuring that communities and biodiversity benefit from how Wilderness Safari carries out its business. The study is based on the analysis of five years of company annual report data on financial aspects and contributions to conservation and community development. The analysis demonstrates that both biodiversity conservation and local communities can benefit from new ways of doing business, which can also enhance corporate reputation while enhancing the quality of its nature based products and services. Suggestions are put forward as to how the private sector can further promote biodiversity conservation and local community development to ensure that CSR 2.0 truly makes a long-term persistent difference, in contrast to the previous attempts under the CSR 1.0 umbrella.