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Blog | Tuesday February 7, 2017

Corporate Transparency under a Trump Administration

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It is perhaps not surprising that we have already experienced setbacks for corporate transparency during the early days of the Trump administration.

Last week, the U.S. Congress voted to repeal Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Act, which required the disclosure of tax and other payments to host governments by extractives companies listed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

It also looks increasingly likely that the implementation of Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires companies to report on conflict minerals due diligence efforts, will be defunded. And it would not be surprising if Section 1502 were entirely repealed in the near future.

At the same time, avenues to improve the quality of company transparency on sustainability issues—such as the SEC’s consultation in 2016 on the future of Regulation S-K, which raised the possibility of enhanced sustainability disclosures in Form 10-K reports to investors on companies’ annual performance—are almost certainly closed off for the time being.

I believe that these and other similar developments raise three main implications for the future of corporate transparency on sustainability issues—and all three point to the increasing importance of taking proactive and strategic approaches to transparency.

First, there are lots of reasons why the trend toward increased transparency will continue, rather than decline:

• Transparency requirements continue to increase outside the United States and at the U.S. state level. For example, reporting requirements on payments to governments by extractives companies are taking hold in the European Union as the Accounting and Transparency Directives are implemented in member states, and similar developments are underway on conflict minerals transparency. Requirements at the U.S. state level continue, such as the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act.
• Stakeholder pressure for disclosure will increase. In an environment of declining regulatory requirements on transparency, the likely corollary is increased pressure from stakeholders. Companies should expect that civil society organizations will initiate well-organized campaigns against companies that retreat from their previous levels of transparency.
• There are good business reasons for disclosure. Over the past decade, we have witnessed a substantial increase in companies proactively using transparency to pursue business objectives. The voluntary disclosures from internet and telecoms companies on personal data requests from governments seeks to promote user trust, while many companies are using climate change reporting requirements to increase supply chain efficiency. Transparency on sustainability performance is often required by government and business customers worldwide.
• The internet isn’t going away. The hyper-transparency made possible by the internet leaves few hiding places and the ability to leak huge amounts of information (such as Snowden or the Panama Papers) makes proactive disclosures by companies a more attractive proposition.

Second, there is a need to reinforce and defend voluntary disclosure mechanisms to maintain progress on sustainability:

• If government requirements for transparency decline, then companies and their stakeholders need to invest in robust voluntary mechanisms. For example, repealing Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act or removing federal procurement rules around human trafficking and forced labor could reduce the quality and availability of data available to companies, especially if their suppliers choose to scale back on their efforts. Collective industry and multistakeholder efforts (such as the EICC/CFSI and EITI) are vitally important countermeasures.
• Existing voluntary disclosures need to be defended. Recent growth in corporate disclosure on controversial topics—such as law enforcement requests for personal information from internet and telecoms companies—could face legal restriction by the new administration. It will be important to develop a strong narrative that defends the rights of companies to make these disclosures.

Third, these political developments are a warning sign that we in the business and sustainability profession would be wise to review our transparency models for conceptual robustness and alter course accordingly. A starting point is as follows:

• Pushing for issue-specific disclosure mandates based on SEC rules is not a sustainable strategy. The criticism that detailed disclosures on precise topics (such as conflict minerals) result in a large volume of information with limited value for “the reasonable investor” is real. Taking an issue-by-issue approach to mandatory disclosure overseen by the SEC is not a scalable model and is too easily dismissed by critics.
• For disclosures targeted at investors, the materiality principle is critical. An increasing range of sustainability issues, such as climate change, can be very material to investors. The case made by the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB)—that “the reasonable investor” will benefit from standardized, decision-useful information on material sustainability issues defined by the company, and that there is a role for the SEC in making this happen—is conceptually compelling. A recent report by the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures makes a similarly strong case.
• Disclosure on issues of material significance to society but not of material significance to investors is essential—but they require disclosure mechanisms other than SEC requirements. There is more to life than return on capital employed, and it is perfectly reasonable to require companies to disclose information of material interest to society, even if not of material interest to investors. GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) and other reporting frameworks argue that society (or “the reasonable citizen”) will also benefit from standardized, decision-useful information on issues material to them. There is a strong long-term rationale to build these disclosure requirements into law, but using investor-oriented bodies (such as the SEC) to achieve these outcomes may not be the right approach.

The tide of history is on the side of transparency, and attempts to limit corporate transparency are futile—as well as being bad for business and the mission to create a just and sustainable world. Our advice is that companies should continue on the upward transparency path that existed prior to the Trump administration, while the broader sustainable business profession should continue developing transparency models that are sound, scalable, and conceptually robust.

Blog | Monday February 6, 2017

When the Business Case and Shared Value Aren’t Enough

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The concept of shared value came from a seminal 2011 article in Harvard Business Review, written by Michael Porter and Mark Kramer, which defined shared value as a management strategy “which involves creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges.”

Many businesses embraced the concept because it allowed them to focus on growing their business. In contrast, many in the sustainability/corporate social responsibility (CSR) community criticized the concept as new clothes for an old concept—arguing that strategic CSR was already about value creation, not philanthropy.

Essentially, no matter what we call it, our field has been focused on “proving the business case” for a long time. To gain credibility and buy-in for sustainability efforts, corporate responsibility consultants and practitioners focus on how such actions drive reputation, engage employees, manage risks, create operational efficiencies, and foster innovation and access to new markets. These business drivers have led to tremendous progress on issues such as working conditions, climate change, or access to healthcare—to name only a few. We should be proud of this progress and continue to find ways to drive alignment between business and societal objectives.

Yet, as I’ve been reflecting on the current political environment in the United States, as well as the significant power and influence of large corporations and their CEOs, I can’t help but wonder if we’ve gone down the wrong path in the corporate sustainability field. Shared value sounds nice, but it essentially means self-interest. It has given permission for companies to care about society only when it provides benefits to them. Yes, businesses have to earn profits and provide a return to their investors, but has the focus on a business case for everything undermined what it means to be a good corporate citizen?

While we can make a case for long-term business drivers for any sustainability action, the truth is, sometimes it just costs more to treat your workers with dignity and to pay them a living wage, and you may not be able to prove the financial benefits. It costs more to prevent pollution, yet the direct benefits are reaped by the public, not the company. Regulation serves to address this market failure, but with weakened regulation all but guaranteed in the United States for the next few years, will the business case always exist? Beyond cost and prioritization of activities, as more “controversial” issues gain attention, employees, customers, and civil society will be looking for business to take a stance. Businesses will need to make a choice: Stakeholders will interpret the lack of a response as the same as supporting a specific side of the issue.

With a few exceptions, companies were notably quiet during the 2016 election and the first few weeks of the new administration. Many are understandably cautious and waiting to see what transpires and what issues they’ll have to prioritize. Others are looking forward to reduced corporate taxes and regulations, and don’t want to “rock the boat.” Many companies, especially in the technology sector, finally spoke out against the immigration ban.

But those examples reflect self-interest, not corporate citizenship: When something directly and materially impacts their business, companies speak up. But why does there have to be a business case to stand up for your values?

For years, I—and many others in the sustainability field—have downplayed the moral arguments. We believed that we could drive much greater progress through a focus on business benefits. I fear we’ve given license to ignore morality. We shouldn’t only protect our environment, our communities, and our workers because it creates shared value; we should do so because we have shared values.

Now is the time when those shared values are coming increasingly under threat—in our politics, in our climate, in our communities. If a corporation is an organization with the legal rights and duties of an individual, then a corporation has rights and duties toward the greater societal good, too. Corporations do not need to be amoral, agnostic entities: They should have a declared purpose and values. With many societal and environmental values under threat, companies will need to make a choice. This can be a transformational moment for the private sector to show how businesses can lead—not just because it’s in their own long-term self-interest, because it’s in the best interest of society. 

Blog | Thursday January 26, 2017

Four Stakeholder Engagement Trends to Watch in 2017

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It is already axiomatic to say that 2017 has ushered in a new era of uncertainty, though core assumptions driving multinational business have been under threat for some time. The ascendancy of competitive nationalism and populist politics in the United States and Europe has simply made these trends impossible to ignore. Developed markets and large emerging markets can no longer be considered benign and predictable from a political risk perspective, and business can no longer assume that we are on a steady journey toward ever greater economic liberalization and regulatory convergence.

These shifts in the operating environment have been accompanied by a dramatic collapse in public trust in institutions, including business, according to the 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer. Though only 37 percent of respondents now find CEOs to be trustworthy, perceptions of the media, NGOs, and governments are even lower. But despite a far more difficult operating environment, business still has an opportunity to provide leadership, innovation, and inclusivity.

There are clear drivers for multinationals to rethink their approaches to risk, resilience, and corporate responsibility. A far wider range of plausible scenarios is in play, and traditional risk management and strategy tools are not well placed to address current challenges. And open, interactive communication with those that are affected by, or have power to influence, a company’s strategy and agenda just shot to the top of the priority list.

Therefore, companies should pay attention to four stakeholder trends in 2017:

1. The corollary of weaker regulation is greater stakeholder activism. The new U.S. government has already signaled that it would like to weaken or dismantle regulation in key sectors, such as finance and energy. But this is unlikely to ease operating conditions for business, as any weakening of regulation at the country level will be accompanied by an increase in stakeholder activism, amplified by the contentious political climate. Companies must learn to proactively address collapsing public trust via consideration of ethics that go beyond mere legal compliance. Many companies are setting up ethics functions that interact with, but are separate from, compliance. Others are exploring synergies among the audit, compliance, and sustainability functions to best promote their values.
2. Local conflicts can now gain global platforms. Hyper-transparency means that community disputes can be amplified to win worldwide prominence. For example, indigenous rights groups in Latin America are partnering with global advocacy organizations to draw attention to their grievances. In agriculture, extractives, and infrastructure, companies that have long differentiated between project-level community engagement and corporate reputation management are finding this distinction increasingly difficult to maintain. Other companies that have traditionally thought of stakeholder engagement as an annual exercise conducted by headquarters are trying to define and understand their stakeholders more deeply, which is a complex exercise when it is not defined by the geographic focus of a project. Shifting migration patterns and cumulative impacts only complicate the exercise.
3. Political and social risk are converging. Demographic shifts and automation are transforming the labor market and putting social services under extreme pressure—just as demands for sustainable, broad-based economic growth gain momentum. In the Global South, the growth of the middle class has increased individual and collective empowerment, while transforming the dynamics of political and social risk. Public opposition to government and business is coalescing around a common language of environmental justice, anti-corruption, and human rights. When protestors voice disillusionment with self-interested and inefficient regimes, local elites move with varying degrees of success to shore up their power. Companies can no longer separate social and political risk considerations, which means understanding the interaction among stakeholders—not just how stakeholders engage with companies.
4. Understanding your impacts is no longer optional. The field of business and human rights has come of age, highlighting the need to extend risk analysis to understanding impacts. The launch of the Sustainable Development Goals in September 2015, too, is encouraging businesses to develop robust frameworks to measure the consequences of their activities. Human rights practitioners have rightly identified oversight of global supply chains as a key corporate vulnerability, with scrutiny of trafficking and slavery by regulators and the public giving rise to fresh norms and expectations. It has become clear to all that corruption everywhere is facilitated by global financial flows and can no longer be characterized as a developing-market problem. And while shareholder value remains any business’s dominant consideration, activists are scrutinizing the effects of tax avoidance upon human rights and broadly questioning the effectiveness of current corporate governance standards.

Neither legal compliance nor standard risk management tools are sufficient for companies who wish to survive and thrive in the new era. Rather, resilient companies will focus on core values, leadership, and a more inclusive approach to business. 

Blog | Wednesday January 25, 2017

Advancing Women’s Empowerment, at Work and Home, through the Technology Sector

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For working women everywhere—whether on an assembly line or in front of a computer—the question “how does she do it all?” can easily trigger eye rolls. Working women continue to carry a disproportionate burden in comparison to men because, more often, they are responsible for both their jobs and being the primary family caregivers. However, the technology sector can play a significant role in empowering women both in the workplace and at home—and businesses stand to benefit if these efforts are pursued strategically.

Last year, BSR published a report, “Building Effective Women’s Economic Empowerment Strategies,” encouraging companies to apply a holistic and integrated approach in empowering women. While the report highlights eight building blocks for such an approach, ICT companies can focus on two areas to support both women climbing the corporate ladder in Silicon Valley or in an electronics factory in Bangalore, as well as female consumers of ICT products and services.

1. Transparent Reporting and Commitments Across the Value Chain

As in other sectors, women in the technology field are paid less than men and have lower representation in senior roles. Men in U.S. tech companies typically make 10 percent more than their female counterparts—a smaller gap compared to other industries but still far from equal. Because of employment discrimination in terms of both compensation and employment opportunities, women are some of the lowest-paid workers in the electronics manufacturing supply chain and often work in difficult conditions, including long hours, potential exposure to health hazards, limited professional development opportunities, and vulnerability to human rights abuses.

In regard to senior leadership, women make up 10 percent of executives within the Silicon Valley 150 (the Bay Area's top tech companies), compared to 20 percent of leaders for companies in the S&P 150. With talent pipeline shortages in the tech industry expected to reach an estimated 1.4 million by 2020, women are essential to ensuring the industry continues to meet rising demands for its services.

Strengthening transparency in reporting on pay equity and gender diversity in leadership roles is an important step toward improving equitable employment opportunities at ICT companies. For example:

• Salesforce conducted a salary review of its 17,000 employees, making subsequent pay adjustments where deemed appropriate, and has invested nearly US$3 million to eliminate statistically significant differences in pay.
• Intel has publicly disclosed diversity numbers for more than a decade, and Google, Microsoft, Apple, Symantec, and several other leading ICT companies have begun doing so as well, helping companies set and publicly work toward leadership diversity goals.
• Jabil has seen improved productivity in its supply chain after implementing HERproject, BSR’s onsite training program that empowers female factory workers through health and financial training. Benefits to the business include increased operational efficiency, higher retention, and improved worker-management relations.
• ICT companies have made public commitments to gender equality by signing the President’s Equal Pay Pledge, and nearly 90 of the 1,368 CEO signatories to the Women’s Empowerment Principles belong to those in the technology sector.

2. Innovative Products and Services for All

ICT companies can offer products and services that all industries and consumers can use to support women’s empowerment efforts and the work-life challenges that women disproportionately face. For example:

• ICT platforms can support employee engagement through interactive training programs and services related to gender equality or discrimination. When these platforms are publicized, like Google did with its unconscious-bias materials, non-tech companies can utilize the material for their own purposes.
• LinkedIn is drawing on user data to provide insight into gender equality across every industry and is researching gender differences in how users promote themselves in personal profiles.
• ICT products can increase access to health and finance. Electronic or mobile healthcare can empower women worldwide to take charge of their health and wellness, learn important health knowledge, and access health services—notably, for reproductive health. In China, BSR’s HERhealth mobile app provides workers with convenient access to educational materials so that they can learn about general and sexual health and share this knowledge with their friends and family members.
• Online outsourcing, the business practice of contracting third-party providers (often overseas) to supply products or services that are delivered over the internet, allows women around the world access to digital jobs and more opportunities to earn a living. Through this model, Samasource has employed more than 8,000 people in Haiti, India, Kenya, and Uganda.
• Improved conference-call software and internet access can enable flexible work schedules. The Women and the Web Alliance (which grew out of Intel’s She Will Connect program) seeks to address the internet gender gap by bringing more than 600,000 young women online in Nigeria and Kenya in the next three years.

There is more work to be done within the ICT industry to advance gender equality, but also many avenues that ICT companies can explore to help other sectors and their consumers use digital resources to advance women as skilled professionals and empowered individuals. Companies can start by making public disclosures and commitments, then assess how their practices and business strategy can improve women’s empowerment efforts for both their female workforce and consumer base.

Learn more about making and putting gender equity commitments into action through BSR’s women’s empowerment practice, which includes a new working group, the Business Action for Women coalition, and our flagship training program, HERproject. 

Blog | Tuesday January 24, 2017

Forging the Missing Link: What the 2017 CDP Supply Chain Report Says About Supplier Engagement

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Supply chains may be the most under-recognized opportunity for companies to address climate change. While companies tend to focus, understandably, on energy efficiency and greenhouse gas reductions in business operations and products, supply chains often account for the majority of product greenhouse gas emissions.

To call attention to supply chain opportunities, BSR has again partnered with CDP on the annual CDP Supply Chain Report—this year, teamed with the Carbon Trust and supported by funding from ClimateWorks Foundation.

Although in many ways encouraging, our findings highlighted the need for urgency. The 4,300 suppliers that reported to CDP increasingly identify business opportunities coupled with their actions to address climate change—benefits like brand and product differentiation, energy and operational efficiency, or the ability to attract and retain talent. But at the same time, the number of companies taking significant action on climate change remains far too low. Only 34 percent of companies reported an overall emissions decrease, while a similar percentage were unable to track their progress. Such limited management both contributes to ongoing climate change and limits the ability of companies to build resilience in the face of increasingly severe climate impacts.

Supply chain engagement remains a challenge: Companies generally have much less control over their supply chains than they do over their owned operations or products, and supply chain emissions typically come from multiple, independent companies—many of which may be several steps removed from the purchasing company attempting to act on climate change. For example, significant emissions in electronics supply chains may happen in extraction and processing of raw materials—but these mining and processing companies are suppliers of suppliers (of suppliers … ) of the company that makes your smartphone.

Supply chain engagement may not be simple. But it is worth the effort. By working with their suppliers, companies can better identify and address the specific and growing physical, regulatory, and other risks they face from climate change. And they can take advantage of opportunities to build closer relationships and help suppliers build their own climate resilience. Because of these types of efforts, suppliers reporting to CDP in 2016 saved more than US$12 billion from emissions reduction projects—a significant increase compared to 2015. Understanding the types of climate risks that suppliers are facing and building resilient supply chain networks will help companies thrive over the long term.

BSR, CDP, and the Carbon Trust plan to continue using the lessons learned from the CDP supply chain program to help companies understand their risks and support greater climate resilience. Whether working with our members to establish and implement bold climate goals, as BSR did with General Mills and Walmart, or conducting industry benchmarking and other research to identify opportunities for action, we look forward to the coming year’s engagements, and we hope to see further improvements in next year’s report.

Blog | Thursday January 19, 2017

How Good Is Your Sustainable Supply Chain Program?

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Many blogs in 2017 are going to start with some play on this obvious theme: We are living in uncertain times. For supply chains, you could argue that this is nothing new, as the complexities of global supply chains have always incorporated a high degree of uncertainty. BSR member companies know they need to manage this uncertainty, and having a supply chain sustainability program is, in essence, a program to do just that. Whether a company calls its program “supply chain sustainability,” “responsible sourcing,” “responsible supply,” “sustainable procurement,” or another name, our members know that these programs help them reduce uncertainty, identify and manage risk, and generate business value. According to the 2016 BSR/GlobeScan State of Sustainable Business Survey, 84 percent of respondents reported having a supplier code of conduct, and 61 percent reported considering sustainability in sourcing strategies.

While the principle of having a sustainable supply chain program is clear and widely accepted, there is still a lack of consensus on the practice. Notwithstanding the forthcoming launch of the ISO 20400 standard on sustainable procurement, there exists no globally accepted framework for what constitutes good practice, although there are frameworks for labor rights through the ILO fundamental principles and core conventions, human rights through the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and, now, climate change through the Paris Agreement.

BSR has nearly 25 years of experience working with companies to drive sustainability through supply chains, and our membership network offers a breadth of good practice. BSR has seen, and continues to see, the evolution of sustainable supply chain management toward greater and deeper impact. In our experience, even if it’s not codified in international frameworks or national laws, a universally accepted framework for sustainable supply chain management has emerged. This framework is applicable across industries, geographies, and cultures—and even across differences in size and levels of ambition among companies.

The Supply Chain Leadership Ladder

BSR’s Supply Chain Leadership Ladder sets out this framework. The ladder allows companies to benchmark their supply chain sustainability program and assess where they are in their maturity, based on the internal and external dimensions of their program.

• Internal dimensions are the scope and structure of the supply chain sustainability program and how the program is governed and managed.
• External dimensions are the company’s approach to supplier engagement and how it is collaborating and reporting.

Each rung of the impact ladder has a defining statement and a set of common elements that helps identify how far up the ladder a company’s supply chain sustainability program sits—is it at level 1, building awareness, or is it all the way up to level 4, driving impact? 

Moving Up the Ladder

In the last year, we’ve seen a continued shift upward among leading companies, moving up the ladder from assuring compliance to managing priorities, across both internal and external dimensions.

For a few years now, we’ve seen companies shift their program scope to incorporate specific priority issues or supply chain categories and now really pushing toward driving impact. For example, companies are identifying the biggest impact categories in their supply chains—see Kering’s focus on sustainable raw materials and H&M’s sustainable cotton efforts. Companies are also addressing the issues that are most material for their business and aligned with action on global priorities such as the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. For instance, Walmart’s efforts at defining science-based climate targets for its supply chain, ANN INC.’s women’s empowerment program, and the Global Impact Sourcing Coalition, facilitated by BSR.

This trend is also playing out in the way companies are engaging their suppliers and reporting. The concerted effort by some companies to publicly disclose their supply chains, such as Marks & Spencer’s Interactive Supplier Map, in some ways draws a line under the compliance movement to allow a new way forward—through transparency. If everyone can see a company’s supply chain, there is arguably less incentive to continue the auditing processes of the past.

Even collaborative industry efforts are part of this trend. For example, the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition’s (EICC) initiatives on key supply chain risks show a move up the ladder from general compliance to identifying the areas where the 110-plus EICC members can collectively have the most impact. Even newer initiatives such as Railsponsible, a sustainable procurement initiative for the rail industry that BSR facilitates, is collectively identifying the key priorities in the industry’s supply chain for 2017.

BSR would argue that all companies, across all industries, in all geographies, and of all sizes should at least be on the ladder. How high you climb is up to your appetite for leadership, your ability to actualize value from your supply chain sustainability program, and the kind of legacy and impact you want to leave in the world.

We’re going to be hearing a lot about uncertainty in 2017. For supply chains, this is nothing new, and we offer the ladder as a framework for responsive, resilient supply chain management.

Reports | Wednesday January 18, 2017

The Supply Chain Leadership Ladder

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For many years, companies across all industries have had sustainable supply chain programs focused on managing sustainability risks and opportunities among their global supplier networks. Leading companies recognize that these supply chain sustainability programs create value, and we have seen a positive trend toward more impact-focused programs among these leaders.

This working paper introduces the Supply Chain Leadership Ladder, a maturity model for supply chain sustainability programs, which companies can use to identify their level of maturity and impact and develop their program toward deeper impact in accordance with their level of ambition.

Blog | Wednesday January 18, 2017

A Letter to the Trump Administration: Federal Climate Policy Can Boost the Economy

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When U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes office Friday, one of the much-debated aspects of his forthcoming administration will start to come into sharp focus: Just what will federal climate policy look like under Trump?

The business community eagerly awaits the answer to this question.

Over the past few years, hundreds of business leaders have set bold goals and made enormous investments to build a thriving, clean energy economy. The business community made these moves because addressing climate change and investing in innovation for clean energy makes sense—for the environment, for people, and for the economy.

For business, climate change is a reality. Businesses see that climate change is disrupting supply chains; affecting access to raw materials; and contributing to rising demands from consumers, business partners, investors, civil society, and government regulators that companies take action to address their climate impacts.

Business leaders also see the potential for profits and savings that can be won by investing in a low-carbon economy. In December, Bill Gates launched the US$1 billion Breakthrough Energy Ventures to fund affordable, reliable, clean energy solutions. In November, Walmart announced ambitious climate-related goals that include a commitment to 50 percent renewable energy by 2025. Walmart’s moves will prevent the release of 1 gigaton of supply chain emissions, and it will save the company billions of dollars. In a similar vein, in 2015, General Mills announced a plan to achieve absolute reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of 28 percent by 2025 across the company’s value chain—“from farm to fork to landfill.”

In announcing General Mills’ commitment, CEO Ken Powell noted that the company has been around for 150 years and is taking climate action so that it can thrive in the next 150 years. “We recognize that we must do our part to protect and conserve natural resources,” Powell said. “Our business depends on it and so does the planet.”

These companies are not alone. Nearly 500 companies and more than 180 investors have made more than 1,000 commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the We Mean Business action framework. Clearly, smart business leaders get that addressing the emissions gap to limit warming to 1.5°C represents a trillion-dollar economic opportunity.

Beyond business, a growing percentage of citizens believe climate action is imperative. According to a 2014 public opinion survey by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, 63 percent of Americans believe climate change is happening, and 74 percent think carbon dioxide should be regulated as a pollutant. A 2016 Gallup poll revealed that Americans’ concern about global warming is at an eight-year high. A 2016 Pew Research Center survey found that the vast majority of Americans—Democrats and Republicans—support the expansion of wind and solar power.

Governments at all levels—from the emissions-powerhouse of China to the economically influential California—are heeding the calls of business and citizens to act on climate. And these investments are paying off: According to the Brookings Institute, between 2000 and 2014, 33 states and D.C. cut carbon emissions, even while their economies expanded.

Yet despite this resounding support and action on climate across U.S. businesses, government, and civil society, there are clear indications that the Trump administration plans to roll back federal climate policy—including the U.S. Clean Power Plan, which has been hailed as the centerpiece of U.S. climate policy. In December, several state attorneys general sent a letter to Vice President-elect Mike Pence and other Republicans outlining ways the administration could undermine the regulation, including an executive order on Trump’s first day of office to rescind the policy.

Business needs federal climate policy to remain competitive on climate issues and to build a sustainable, economically viable future for the country. For business, a federal climate policy would level the playing field, ensure energy price stability, stimulate investments and innovation, create jobs, and support homegrown American solutions to one of the world’s biggest challenges.

As Trump prepares to move into the Oval Office, we urge his administration to consider the view of business and the resounding support from citizens and governments and pursue a clear federal climate policy. If the Trump administration truly wants to make America great again, then it will support a federal policy that helps the United States meet its climate commitment and helps business create a thriving, clean energy economy.

Blog | Tuesday January 17, 2017

Driving Collective Action on Women’s Empowerment

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On January 21, hundreds of thousands of women are expected to descend on Washington, D.C., to march in solidarity for women’s equality and to send a strong message to the new administration that women’s rights are human rights and that discrimination of any kind will not be tolerated.

This activism exemplifies the global movement underway around women’s empowerment, which seeks to illuminate the continued struggles women face fighting for their rights, equality, and safety in the workplace, at home, and with respect to their own bodies. Women fight these battles daily—battles that manifest quietly when a woman hesitates whether to go for that promotion or, more visibly and violently, when women are harassed or violated at work or at home. The march on Washington also exemplifies the collective power women—and men—have when they come together to demand change.

For the business community, there is a lot that can be learned from grassroots movements that start with determined individuals and transform into powerful tidal waves of change. Leaders who are willing to be the first to make a bold commitment, invest in unlikely partnerships, or set wildly ambitious targets are our trailblazers. But they can’t do it alone. The challenges facing business today—and those particularly related to women’s progress—transcend any one company, sector, or even the business community as a whole. 

Last year, my colleagues drew attention to the need for effective and ambitious business action on women’s empowerment. Recognizing that investing in women is a business opportunity as well as imperative from a moral standpoint and to development outcomes, companies have started making significant commitments to advance progress for women. Now is the time to take these commitments to the next level. There is much more the business community can achieve by working together to harness the potential presented by women’s advancement. And the business community can’t act alone. Partnerships across sectors and with stakeholders, including national and local governments and women’s funds and grassroots organizations, are essential for tackling the multidimensional barriers that hold women back, scaling solutions, and creating meaningful impact.

Within this context, BSR—in partnership with Win-Win Strategies and supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs—ask you to join us as we launch Business Action for Women, a collaborative initiative for companies aimed at driving collective action on progress for women.

At the core of this initiative, a business call to action will align companies around an aspirational vision for what companies hope to achieve through their participation in the group. Companies will also contribute to a shared measurement framework that will help them to measure individual and collective progress.

Moving the needle on critical women’s empowerment issues requires focused collaboration and scalable partnerships. Through company workshops and consultations, we’ve determined three broad areas where companies believe they can make the greatest impact given operational footprint, available assets, current programming, and opportunities for influence.

1. Advancing Women in Supply Chains: Companies across sectors struggle with female advancement at middle-management levels across the value chain. A McKinsey study found that fully closing gender gaps at work would add up to US$28 trillion in annual GDP by 2025. Through Business Action for Women, we propose focusing on the supply chain, providing a platform for companies and key stakeholders to come together to address the greatest barriers to women’s advancement.
2. Building Resilience on Raw Materials: Women have a unique role to play as change-makers to address current and future climate-related environmental challenges. However, today women are disproportionately impacted by climate change, with studies showing that women are 14 times more likely to die during a disaster. They are also dramatically underrepresented in the renewable-energy sector, comprising only 20 percent of the workforce. There is untapped potential for women to drive solutions related to adaptation, mitigation, and resilience. Climate solutions also present opportunities for collaboration among sectors such as consumer goods, food and agriculture, technology, and financial services to drive holistic solutions for women’s empowerment.
3. Eliminating Gender-Based Violence: Tackling gender-based violence is crucial to progress on every other women’s empowerment issue. As my colleague Marat Yu pointed out, violence against women is one of the world’s greatest social, economic, and public-health problems. Not only does it violate women’s human rights, but it also negatively affects business. Despite recognizing gender-based violence as a pervasive issue, companies are often uncertain how to take action. Business Action for Women will provide a platform for broad coalition-building to drive advocacy and policy efforts and tackle adverse norms that condone violence.

BSR will partner with group members to further define the focus areas and develop specific action plans for each cluster during the first half of 2017.

Collaboration and partnerships are at the center of this initiative. Under each of the action clusters, we will seek out partners to align our efforts, avoid duplications, and connect to existing solutions wherever possible. Our partnership with Win-Win Strategies will ensure that women’s voices are the center of all of the work we will do. We also plan to leverage our partnership with the Deliver for Good campaign to link our efforts to work being done by leading women’s NGOs and international organizations to advance the Sustainable Development Goals. For companies already taking action on one of the 12 investment areas, we encourage you to sign on to the campaign to show your commitment now.

Business Action for Women is a three-year initiative that launches this month. We hope you will join us and your peers as we do our part to contribute to a global movement to advance equality and progress for women.

To learn more about Business Action for Women, join our webinar on Wednesday January 25 from 8-9 a.m. PST/11 a.m.-noon EST/5-6 p.m. CET or contact Elissa Goldenberg (egoldenberg@bsr.org) for more information.

Blog | Thursday January 12, 2017

Responsive and Responsible Leadership: A Look Ahead at Davos

Preview

The year 2016 will go down in history as the year when elites and powerful institutions were delivered a sharp blow, not least through the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s ascendance. In this context, what are we to make of 2017’s World Economic Forum annual meeting, kicking off next week in Davos, perceived by many as the ultimate gathering of world elites?

The theme of this year’s Davos is “Responsive and Responsible Leadership.” Responsive leadership requires that we listen to the aspirations and concerns of all our fellow citizens—including understanding and responding to the very real concerns expressed on the streets and in the ballot boxes in 2016. But let us also remember that responsible leadership, the other part of the equation, means defending principles that these same voters appear to have rejected.

The exercise of power in the post-financial-crisis world certainly leaves much to be desired. Income inequality continues to grow; too many people are excluded from power based on their gender, race, or other characteristics; and we continue to see blatantly unethical actions by institutions and leaders from the public and private sectors.

All this culminated in unexpected election results in two critical democracies, which in turn has led to the sudden rediscovery of the communities, needs, and perspectives that asserted themselves at the ballot box with a loud cry for change.

While this is the definition of responsive leadership, there is a huge risk, however, that in doing so, we will forsake crucial principles that should guide us politically, culturally, and economically.

After all, it is not elitist to stand up for human rights.

It is not elitist to defend climate science.

It is not elitist to embrace open societies—and, yes, open borders.

It is not elitist to demand respect for all people, nor to recognize that women, people of color, immigrants, and others have too often been failed by our economic and justice systems.

It is not elitist to defend journalists who seek the truth.

It is not elitist to consider the well-being of people across the globe (while also giving full attention to communities closer to home).

It is not elitist to call out leaders who give license to merchants of hate.

It is not elitist to expect that informal norms of civility and fairness be the guide star for all leaders.

So, as we welcome 2017, let us not only focus on power dynamics or the clarion call for change expressed by voters. The real question we face is whether all of us, as citizens, workers, politicians, or business executives, will defend essential values and principles. This is what responsible leadership demands, now more than ever.