In Case You Missed It: Noteworthy BSR Insights of 2017

December 15, 2017

Authors

Elisabeth Best

Former Manager, Sustainability Management, BSR

As the year draws to a close, we are taking a moment to reflect on the turbulent year that has been 2017. In addition to the top blogs and reports of the year, we wanted to share with you some of our favorite series and stories that you may have missed.

Our first series of 2017 was on shared solutions to global challenges. It explored outcomes and impacts of our work with partners and through our Collaborative Initiatives. As part of this series, we launched two new efforts—Building Responsibly and the Future of Reporting initiative.

We also ran a series on the business case for climate action, in partnership with We Mean Business, that dove deep into corporate energy management trends, business resilience in the face of extreme weather, and the influence of global value chains on climate action from business.

During Climate Week NYC, we brought these two themes together in a series on climate and collaboration, with our thoughts on new climate leadership to realize the Paris vision; the need for radical collaboration, inside and outside of companies; and company examples of collaborating to achieve climate leadership. In short, we are seeing collaboration on a massive scale across all sectors, including and especially from business, to achieve the objectives articulated in the Paris Agreement.

We also sat down with the practice leads from each of our areas of expertise—climate, human rights, inclusive economy, supply chain sustainability, sustainability management, and women’s empowerment—to talk about the future of sustainable business in a Q&A series. Their thoughts also helped inform our report on The Future of Sustainable Business, which we released in October.

We published quite a few insights outside these series that are worth revisiting, too. Here are some of my favorites:

To feel inspired by successful pilots to promote women’s health and empowerment, read Dorje Mundle’s Innovative Financing for Sustainability at Scale.
To give your brain a workout by thinking through the human rights implications of artificial intelligence, and specifically what remedy should look like for decisions made by machines, see Remedy against the Machine from Dunstan Allison-Hope.
To remind yourself why you bring your values to your day job, and why business leadership on diversity and inclusion is more important now than ever, read Now Is the Time to Examine (and Re-Examine) Your Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion from Aditi Mohapatra.
To learn about (and then explore!) a tool to help you empower women in your business, check out A New Tool to Help Close the Gender Gap by Lauren Shields.
To get excited about the transportation innovations that will revolutionize the way we get from point A to point B, as well as their sustainability implications, enjoy Sustainability on the Move: Transportation Innovation by John Hodges.