This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), an independent body that has pioneered sustainability reporting from a niche practice to one now adopted by organizations around the world. Eight months into his new role, I spoke to the Chief Executive of GRI, Tim Mohin, about the growth of sustainability reporting, the importance of transparency, competition between reporting methods and his hopes for his own legacy.
How to eradicate poverty and promote prosperity in a changing world?
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On 17 and 18 July, high-level representatives from United Nations member states, inter-governmental agencies, non-governmental organizations and the private sector, gathered in New York to discuss how to ‘eradicate poverty and promote prosperity in a changing world’.
California....Water: The place name and the liquid substance are interconnected in the minds of sustaianbility professionals thinking about climate change and the effects that we are already seeing in the American landscape.
The chronic drought in the Golden State has brought the water shortage issue in sharp relief, especially since California is for many crops the "breadbasket" of America, and sufficient water for irrigation and food processing is a critical need.
Meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires coordinated action by local civil society, the business community and international donor organizations. We talk to Anders Gerdin, to understand the perspective of the development agencies and policymakers involved in this effort.
UPS is one of the world’s leading providers of specialized package delivery and supply chain services. The US-based global logistics company employs over 434,000 people, and offers services in more than 220 countries and territories. UPS is committed to pioneering more sustainable solutions in every aspect of its business.
After two decades working as a CSR professional and just three months leading GRI, I’m more convinced than ever that transparency is a powerful force for change. But I’m also just as convinced that we are still far from end goal: sustainable development. We must evolve sustainability reporting in order to get from here to there.
"Operating under the radar" -- that is, various categories of institutional investors getting active in the "investor activist" game? Bruce Goldfarb, CEO of Okapi Partners, describes a sea change that he sees that is underway, the trend in how large institutions are approaching in the [investor] push for corporate change. The lens is the annual corporate proxy season and the many campaigns therein, including the 2017 campaign. Okapi is one of the influential proxy advisors for both investor and companies, working on some 48 campaigns during 2017.
The S&P 500 (R) universe of large-cap companies is the most widely used gauge for investors of large-cap U.S. corporate entities. There is more than US$7 trillion investments benchmarked to the S&P 500, with index assets of almost $2 trillion represented. The index captures more than 80 percent of available market capitalization, notes owner S&P Dow Jones Indexes / McGraw Hill Financial.
In September 2015, all 193 Member States of the United Nations set a very ambitious and necessary agenda for achieving a better future for us all by adopting a set of 17 global goals: the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs aim to end poverty and hunger, fight inequalities and injustice, and protect our planet.
And, if we want to realize these goals, it’s essential that we get “buy in” from investors around the world.
