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Blog | Tuesday September 26, 2017

Introducing the Sustainable Business Playbook

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Last week in New York, leaders from business, government, and civil society descended on New York City during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) for the whirlwind of meetings, briefings, and announcements that have become the sustainability world’s answer to Fashion Week.

What has been known as Climate Week for almost a decade is now also joined by a flurry of activity related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This creates a platform for new commitments; new announcements, including that of the 2018 Global Climate Action Summit; and new dialogues like those hosted by the World Economic Forum and Bloomberg Philanthropies (both looking to fill the space left unoccupied by the end of the Clinton Global Initiative).

This is all to the good. Yet at the same time, each year these events inspire the nagging sensation that the sustainable business community excels at engaging with the already-committed, while the “outside world” continues on without regard for the vision articulated by the SDGs.

The aftermath of the 2016 election in the U.S. only places that view into sharp relief, as the White House is held by people who deny climate science, disregard human rights, and close borders, not to mention aim to slash funding of the very efforts that are needed to achieve the SDGs. The question on our minds last week was this: How do we break through these barriers to ensure that business continues to exert leadership when Washington appears to have ceded its role?

One of the great stories of 2017 is that business leaders have reinforced their commitment to climate action; stated their opposition to the travel ban, and expressed revulsion at the apparent tolerance of hate groups. Just this past weekend, the National Football League became the latest enterprise to express its opposition to divisive speech from the White House.

These steps have had impact, and they have reinforced support for what we would like to believe are universal values. However, what is also needed is a positive agenda that will guide business in the U.S.—one that takes a proactive, comprehensive approach to defining what our future should look like. BSR is therefore pleased to release a Playbook for Sustainable Business in the United States as a contribution to shape and support the actions that will ensure that the vision of a just and sustainable world becomes a reality.

We developed this Playbook as the outcome of a dialogue we have led with 15 U.S.-headquartered companies, mainly in heavy manufacturing, over the past several months. This group came together to exchange views on how to navigate a new political environment while remaining committed to keeping sustainability front and center for their organizations.

The Playbook aims to provide direction for business in the U.S. (whether headquartered or with significant operations in the country) to devise effective strategies that respond to the current context while also staying focused on the longer haul. It is based on the premise that advocating for sustainability in clear business terms is much more likely to build effective, broad, and cross-party coalitions.

During these discussions, participants surfaced five key perspectives about the role of sustainable business in the U.S. today:

• Sustainability enhances competitiveness: The connections between sustainability, business success, and economic growth in the U.S. are strengthening. The short-, medium-, and long-term competitiveness of the U.S. economy requires investment in sustainable business models, technologies, and products.
• Business should stay the course: Sustainable business leaders for the most part are “staying the course” on sustainability, and can continue to do that by reinforcing commitments to meaningful business action on climate change, human rights, and the SDGs.
• Business should demonstrate relevance and benefits to the public: It is essential that sustainable business leaders become more effective at connecting sustainability challenges with priorities that resonate with the general public, through innovation, employment, and competitiveness.
• Sustainable business leaders can shape effective public policy frameworks: Sustainable business leaders have a unique opportunity to shape the public policy and regulatory frameworks that will support the long-term success of sustainable business and the U.S. economy. By directly connecting sustainability to business success, sustainable business leaders can help bridge the political divide with a shared vision for U.S. economic prosperity. The business voice needs to be heard in policy fora, not only in Washington, but also in the states and cities where problem-solving remains very much on the agenda.
• Coalition development advances progress: Systemic change requires deep collaboration, and this is even more true when policy frameworks grow more fragmented. The need for companies to build coalitions, along the lines of the “We Are Still In” effort that responded forcefully to the stated decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, is just one example of why and how this is important.

Today’s unique political landscape, while threatening to interfere with progress at the surface, presents a unique opportunity to redefine the future of sustainable business. We hope you find this Playbook useful, and we believe its elements not only respond to a particular moment in the U.S., but also provide a framework that can be applied in other contexts.

As we look forward to advancing the objectives of this effort in the coming months and years, we invite you to join us in collaborative efforts to shape an approach to sustainable business that is fit for purpose in turbulent times and charts a path that will serve companies and wider society well in the coming decades.

Blog | Monday September 25, 2017

Q&A: The Future of Business and Human Rights

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To continue our Q&A series with our experts on the past, present, and future of sustainable business, we sat down with our Human Rights lead Margaret Jungk to discuss innovations, opportunities, and challenges in the field.

Elisabeth Best: What has been the single most important innovation in the human rights and business field in the last 25 years?

Margaret Jungk: The easy answer is that the single most important innovation in the human rights and business field in the last 25 years was the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), unanimously endorsed in the UN in 2011 by states across the political divide, from India to Russia, Argentina, Norway, and the U.S. The UNGPs were also strongly supported across the business and NGO divide, from The Coca Cola Company to Amnesty International and the Chinese national mining authority. These aren’t a mere set of principles: They are the formula through which we apply international human rights principles to the business context. 

Incredible strides, including the extension of principles of equality to LGBTQI populations and sophisticated methodologies for monitoring and reporting violations, have been made through numerous international human rights instruments that are being actively used in the business realm, too.

Best: What does sustainable business, specifically as it relates to human rights, look like in 2030?

Jungk: Given the rapid pace of developments in the human rights and business field over the past 12 years, I’m going to stretch far when imagining what the next 12 years will bring, taking us to 2030.

They will bring much greater scrutiny on companies, as advances in technology continue enable a community member to transmit a picture or video around the world almost instantly, for example of a community displaced by a large infrastructure project or a factory managed under poor conditions. The future will also bring much greater engagement by companies, not only in response to the negative pressures mentioned above, but also as a more active positive force in society at large. I think statements by business leaders like those on the Trump Administration’s immigration policy will become far more commonplace.

One of the big questions we are running through BSR’s new Sustainable Futures Lab is the question of how new technologies like artificial intelligence will affect the application of human rights principles, down to very basic questions like ‘what constitutes a human.’ 

Best: What’s the biggest challenge or opportunity you see looking forward?

Jungk: Two words: collective impacts. The human rights field is pretty advanced when it comes to addressing singular-level impacts on human rights—for example, if a company has a discriminatory labor practice or an unsafe working environment. However, if we talk about a negative impact resulting from the combined actions of multiple companies—like a group of extractives companies polluting a water system when no single company exceeds the pollution level, but the combination of polluters in the area makes the water unfit for drinking, assigning responsibility becomes more difficult. Another example of a collective impact is climate change; supply chain issues often also implicate multiple companies.

These collective impacts are by no means rare—rather, they are probably the majority of negative human rights impacts. Yet it’s tremendously difficult to establish due diligence requirements for companies to prevent and mitigate collective level impacts, and to collaborate on remedy for those impacts when they do occur. 

Best: What are leading companies doing today to make a sustainable future a reality?

Jungk: True leaders are engaging in the development of what we call the ‘human rights ecosystem.’ 

It’s an acknowledgement that companies never operate in a vacuum. Instead, they operate as part of a larger ecosystem consisting of competitors, suppliers, government regulators, and civil society organizations, among others. This larger social ecosystem can be geared in a way that supports and reinforces human rights, or, in some countries, it actively undermines them. We see some companies working to build the capacity for respecting human rights throughout multiple tiers of their supply chains, while others are actively engaging their peers or even their governments to help ensure good public policy that is aligned with human rights. This stuff isn’t quick, and it isn’t easy, but I have no doubt that the longer-term, systemic-level impacts generated by these efforts have tremendously positive ripple effects.

Best: What aspect of this year’s BSR Conference are you most excited about? 

Jungk: I must admit to being a bit of an introvert, so usually big conferences aren’t my cup of tea. I make an exception for the BSR Conference, because it’s one where I have tremendously interesting conversations. Last year over one coffee break, I moved from a conversation with a company struggling to implement grievance mechanisms in its supply chain (where it has very little leverage), to one with another company confronting a community protest related to competition over scarce water resources. It’s these real-life challenges and the opportunity to help people find viable solutions to impasses between companies and community rights that I look forward to most.  

Blog | Friday September 22, 2017

Introducing the Sustainable Futures Lab

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From extreme weather events around the globe, to the election of Donald Trump, to China’s decision to phase out cars fueled by fossil fuels, the world is changing profoundly and rapidly. Almost every business is facing fundamental changes—changes that are causing companies everywhere to rethink their business models, their customers, how they deliver value, and who their competitors are. The landscape for business and sustainability is being reshaped.

Not only are the speed and scope of these changes hard to fathom, but they are all interacting with each other to produce bewildering complexity. The automation of garment production, for example, has massive implications not only for manufacturing, but also for international development, global supply chains, human rights, and retail.

Discussing the impact of automation on retail at BSR’s recent Responsible Retail Symposium, Sebastian Vanderzeil, a director and analyst at Cornerstone Capital Group, said, “By 2025, things will be so completely different that I don't even know what they look like.”

The Need for Futures Thinking

In times like these, any business that plans for the future by extrapolating from the past is unlikely to succeed. One example of how quickly the world is shifting? Four years ago, the Energy Information Agency forecast that global coal use would grow 39 percent by 2040. This year, however, it revised that forecast downward to just 1 percent.

For organizations to survive and thrive in such turbulent times, they need ways to grapple with rapid change, uncertainty, and complexity. Futures thinking, also known as strategic foresight, provides a set of tools to do this. These methodologies provide structured ways to spot signals of change on the horizon, explore multiple possible futures, and chart a path forward that assumes turbulence.

To meet the increasing need for futures thinking, BSR has launched a new Sustainable Futures Lab, which will enable foresight-driven engagement with a broad spectrum of changes across various domains that are reshaping the context for business overall, and for companies committed to advancing sustainability in particular. Sustainability is fundamentally about creating a future that is fit for purpose, and the Sustainable Futures Lab will build upon BSR’s 25-year legacy of thinking about how to create a better future.

As its name suggests, the Lab will be experimental in its approach. It will test hypotheses and prototype new solutions across BSR’s three key areas of activity: research, consulting, and collaboration.

Research: Horizon Scanning and Big Data

At the foundation of a robust strategic foresight practice is horizon scanning: a systematic exploration across multiple domains to identify emerging issues, new threats and opportunities, and signals of change. Our new horizon-scanning practice will combine human intelligence with cutting-edge machine learning.

This practice will generate new topics for inquiry that will build upon and extend BSR’s research agenda. Our work on topics such as a sustainable transition to automation and the sustainability challenges and opportunities of 3-D printing will be augmented by examinations of new issues we see reshaping sustainable business, such as algorithmic bias and the business implications of universal basic income.

Consulting: Scenario Planning and “Future-Proofing”

Transforming insight into impact is core to BSR’s theory of change, and the Sustainable Futures Lab will offer our members new tools for finding the business opportunities in creating a more just and sustainable world.

To spot these opportunities under conditions of such profound uncertainty, it is essential that businesses take into account multiple possible futures—rather than betting the farm on one “expected future.” One of the most powerful tools for doing this is scenario planning, which makes use of an entire set of plausible futures to test and enhance strategy. As a recent article in MIT Sloan Management Review observes, “Many senior executives are coming to the view that smart management benefits from a richer understanding of the present possibilities afforded from multiple views about possible futures.”

BSR will now offer scenario planning as a strategic foresight service to its members. In addition, we will be sharing new approaches to “future proof” existing offerings, such as materiality assessments, stakeholder engagement, and climate resilience strategies.

Strategic Collaborations

Solving humanity’s most pressing challenges often requires work that goes beyond what one company can do alone—and the Sustainable Futures Lab will use strategic foresight to enhance BSR’s collaborative initiatives. Horizon scanning will be leveraged to identify new opportunity spaces. Scenario planning will be used to help members of collaborative initiatives consider different futures and align around a preferred vision. And the Lab will also aim to launch a dedicated collaborative initiative offering members the opportunity for hands-on engagement with the people and the issues shaping the future.

What’s Next

The Sustainable Futures Lab will host several sessions at the BSR Conference in Huntington Beach, California, next month: Join us for a futures-thinking design sprint and conversations about how futures can help us redefine sustainable business. The BSR University course on Preparing Sustainability Strategies will also address strategic foresight topics, including scenario planning. Finally, we are also in the process of planning futures workshops and a global roadshow later this year and early next year.

If you’d like to discuss how futures might be useful for your organization, please get in touch.

Blog | Thursday September 21, 2017

Redefining Sustainable Business: Radical Collaboration, Inside and Out 

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As our CEO Aron Cramer articulated in his recent post, our continually evolving landscape means “a new agenda for business, new tools for sustainability leaders, and, in a world of political volatility, a new approach to business leadership” are urgently needed.

The world is increasingly looking to businesses—and business leaders—to chart a path forward on a range of critical topics, from diversity and inclusion to climate action.

One key element of this new approach will be a dramatically increased role for collaboration, both within organizations and between companies and their stakeholders.

For example, at BSR we are engaging member companies in the development of formal strategies and plans to understand and address vulnerability to climate change and related impacts across their entire value chains. These rapidly growing efforts aimed at building climate resilience provide a useful case study of what sustainable business will increasingly require.

While we are still in the early stages of this work, two things have become clear.

First, business can’t do it alone.

The challenge of building resilience to climate change—as so painfully illustrated by recent extreme weather events around the world—is the very definition of a “systems challenge.” Most companies have some degree of business continuity planning in place focused on the “hardening” of physical company infrastructure. This is of course critically important, but it is just the beginning of a journey that must also address the following questions:

• Even if our facilities are secured, will our employees be able to make it work?
• Will our suppliers be able to provide the inputs we need to maintain production?
• How well equipped are the communities we operate in to restore/resume operations and commerce in the aftermath of a storm or other disruptive event?
• What investments can and should we make in building critical infrastructure and capabilities across our value chain—and what is our best role vis-a-vis public sector and other players?

Even more important than the increased expectations of business is the stark reality that business cannot achieve its objectives without working with other sectors. Specifically, business needs to step up its approach to advocacy and collaboration, using the full range of its core competencies to enable and influence stakeholders in the public sector and civil society.

And the sustainability department certainly can’t do it alone.

This leads us to a second, more internally focused point about addressing resilience and other critical systemic challenges. The scope and complexity of issues and efforts necessitate a whole organization approach to sustainability, leveraging the combined competencies of multiple functions and disciplines. Here are just a few examples of how departments across companies are engaging on climate resilience:

• A dramatically expanded approach to enterprise risk management, with participation from strategic planning, is critical to development and acceptance of an expended approach to risk assessment/management.
• Operations and transport/logistics teams assess vulnerability across company-owned operations and networks, while global supply chain and procurement organizations do the same for key input providers, and these departments will be the owners of programs and partnerships to address their respective vulnerabilities.
• Public affairs and government relations teams evaluate climate-related regulatory and policy risks and determine how best to address them in the context of companies’ overall public policy objectives.
• The human resources team develops enhancements to workplace policies, training, and capability-building.
• A company’s foundation identifies how to allocate resources and pursue partnerships key to the implementation of the resilience strategy.

What does this mean for CSOs and sustainability teams?

Sustainability leaders and their teams will play important roles in enabling other parts of the business, both internally through cross-functional work and externally via significantly greater collaboration and advocacy. In order to do this, however, most sustainability teams will need to increase their focus on organizational change and capability-building.

Sustainability teams will also need to leverage their external engagement and relationships with unusual actors to help other departments spot trends and proactively respond to issues as they arise. They will be called upon to incubate new public-private projects and partnerships, too—sometimes in conjunction with their company foundations. The UN Sustainable Development Goals in particular can serve as a vehicle for sustainability teams to build coalitions around key issues and priorities for the organization.

The bottom line: Sustainability departments need to embrace and promote a spirit of “radical collaboration” if they are to achieve their objectives in a rapidly changing environment.

Join us to continue the conversation on how business leads at the BSR Conference 2017 in Huntington Beach, California, from October 22-24.

This week, we are featuring several blog posts about the role of collaboration in shaping our climate future. Follow @BSRnews on Twitter for updates from Global Goals Week and Climate Week NYC; see our recent blog post for the full list of where we’ll be.

Blog | Wednesday September 20, 2017

New Climate Leadership to Realize the Paris Vision

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As world leaders gather in New York for the UN General Assembly and Climate Week NYC, we are excited to discuss how we can all contribute to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): to end poverty, protect the planet, and secure shared prosperity.

Since the SDGs and the Paris Climate Agreement were adopted in 2015, we have seen a wide range of actors around the globe commit to bold action in support of this vision. Although the United States government indicated its intent earlier this year to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, in their G20 Declaration this year, “the Leaders of the other G20 members state that the Paris Agreement is irreversible.”   

Back in May, we expressed our confidence that the business community would continue to lead on climate action, realizing the Paris vision of a resilient, low-carbon economy that sparks innovation, creates jobs, and puts the world on a safer, more prosperous path. In fact, business leadership has been on display since the U.S. announcement, and it is especially visible this week. Through the We Are Still In declaration, 2,300 American businesses, investors, and other actors have re-committed to delivering on the promise of the Paris Agreement. America’s Pledge, led by California Governor Jerry Brown and Michael Bloomberg, is an effort to quantify and aggregate the impact of these and other American actors implementing emissions reductions and building climate resilience on the ground.

It’s exciting to see more companies engaged on climate than ever before, and individual companies are also making commitments on an unprecedented scale. Walmart’s Project Gigaton aims to remove one billion tons of emissions from its supply chain, and HPE’s supply chain management program seeks to avoid 100 million tons of emissions. Climate action up and down and value chain is fast becoming a hallmark of leadership: General Mills has a 28 percent emissions reduction target by 2025 from “farm to fork to landfill,” Carlsberg has a 2030 target to reduce emissions “beer in hand” by 30 percent, and Mars recently announced a 2025 target to reduce emissions by 27 percent across its value chain as part of its Sustainable in a Generation Plan. These goals not only align with the latest science on what is necessary to keep warming well below 2°C—they represent commitments to collaborate with suppliers and customers to create the climate future we need.

Equally important is leadership in assessing and disclosing climate risks and building resilience to these risks, in recognition of the climate impacts we now face. Yesterday, the We Mean Business coalition, of which BSR is a proud founding partner, launched a commitment to implement the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures. Ten companies across seven sectors have become the first to commit to disclose information about the financial implications of their climate-related risks and opportunities.

This new climate leadership, and many other examples like it, will be on display a year from now at the 2018 Global Climate Action Summit convened by Governor Brown. BSR is very pleased to serve on the Steering Committee of the Summit as the representative of the business community, and we will create channels for business input as plans for this event evolve. 

The 2018 Global Climate Action Summit will demonstrate how business, investors, states and regions, cities, civil society, and citizens are implementing climate action, inspiring new ambition, and creating an inclusive economy that works for everyone. It will be an opportunity for new climate leadership to shine, and to build momentum for the 2018 UN Climate Conference, when governments will take stock of the world’s progress towards the Paris goals and begin preparations to update their own targets in 2020.

To bring the Paris vision to life, it’s essential that we work together across industries, sectors, and borders. We are thrilled to represent business at next year’s Summit and excited to see this trend of bold, collaborative leadership continue. 

This week, we are featuring several blog posts about the role of collaboration in shaping our climate future. Follow @BSRnews on Twitter for updates from Global Goals Week and Climate Week NYC; see our recent blog post for the full list of where we’ll be.

Blog | Monday September 18, 2017

Collaborating to Achieve Climate Leadership

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This week, leaders from around the globe will converge in New York City to participate in the conversation about the UN Sustainable Development Goals and our climate future.

Corporate climate action has been on the rise for a few years now: Since We Mean Business launched in 2014, 596 companies have made 1,030 climate commitments; almost 300 of those are commitments to set science-based targets for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions.

For the world’s largest companies, climate action increasingly means collaboration. As ambitious as these companies are, they cannot reach their GHG emissions reduction goals without forging partnerships in their value chains and beyond. Moreover, they are finding that collaboration can reap benefits beyond emissions reductions.

This past June, BSR and CDP convened 19 companies in Stockholm to share their insights on the value of partnerships in reducing GHG emissions. Stora Enso, who hosted the event in its new innovation center in the Swedish capital, demonstrated how its own climate programs are driven by deep collaboration. The company, a leading provider of renewable solutions in packaging, biomaterials, wooden constructions, and paper, has entered into many fruitful public and private partnerships in support of its climate ambitions, including the following:

• 13 of its mills provide biofuels to local municipal district heating systems.
• In Belgium, its Langerbrugge mill is helping Volvo Car Gent cut CO2 emissions via a district heating connection that uses industrial waste for energy production.
• The company’s Montes del Plata pulp mill produces electricity from biomass and delivers five percent of Uruguay’s annual consumption to the national grid.
• Stora Enso has entered a Carbon Pact with Maersk Line to jointly reduce their GHG emissions.

These types of partnerships were a common theme in the discussion around the table—Electrolux, IKEA Group, and H&M, for instance, also shared their own experiences collaborating, with suppliers in particular, to pursue ambitious emissions reduction goals.

Other recent major climate announcements have similarly strong collaboration components. For example, Mars announced that it will spend US$1 billion in the coming years to tackle sustainability issues, including climate change. Specifically, Mars will focus on its supply chain, acting on the words of CEO Mark Reid, that “We must work together, because the engine of global business—its supply chain—is broken, and requires transformational, cross-industry collaboration to fix it.” Mars already had goals in place to reach net zero emissions within its own operations by 2040, but under its new “Sustainable in a Generation” plan (which will complement existing targets), the company has committed to reduce emissions across its value chains by 67 percent by 2050.

Last year, Walmart—the world’s largest employer and largest company in the world by revenue—launched its Project Gigaton to pursue an absolute greenhouse gas emissions reduction of 18 percent by 2025 and further work to prevent the release of 1 gigaton of emissions in its global supply chain by 2030. With this project, Walmart will provide an emissions reduction toolkit to a broad network of its suppliers, focusing on areas such as manufacturing, materials, and use of products.  

As these examples reveal, the future of climate action is a path charted with innovative and transformative partnerships, and many companies are already working with their various stakeholders toward a climate-compatible future.

I invite you to join me at the annual BSR Conference next month in Huntington Beach, California, as business pioneers this new territory. I will be moderating a conversation with Björn Hannappel, head of responsibility strategy and standards, Deutsche Post DHL Group, and Brandon Owens, director of environmental strategy and analytics, GE, to explore how current modes of production, manufacturing, consumption, product design, and financing tools will be affected by climate change, as well as how collaboration can help companies face risks and seize opportunities as leaders in a low-carbon economy.

This week, we will feature several blog posts about the role of collaboration in shaping our climate future. Follow @BSRnews on Twitter for updates from Global Goals Week and Climate Week NYC; see our recent blog post for the full list of where we’ll be.

Blog | Friday September 15, 2017

Where BSR Will Be During the UN General Assembly and Climate Week NYC

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This week and next, major events are underway in New York around the UN General Assembly (September 12-25): Climate Week NYC (September 18-24) and Global Goals Week (September 16-23).

BSR staff will participate in these events associated with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as we work with the private sector and other partners to build inclusive prosperity and climate resilience, leadership, and action.

The following members of our team will be on the ground in New York City—follow them on Twitter for their take on what’s happening:

• President and CEO, Aron Cramer (@aroncramer)
• Senior Vice President, Laura Gitman (@lauragitman)
• Managing Director, John Hodges
• Managing Director, Consumer Sectors, Elisa Niemtzow (@ElisaN)
• Director, Jeffrey Crawford (@JeffCrawford79)
• Director, Women’s Empowerment, Aditi Mohapatra (@AditiMohapatra)
• Director, Healthcare, Dorje Mundle (@dorjemundle)
• Director, Sustainable Futures Lab, Jacob Park (@JacobPark)
• Director, Sustainability Management, Alison Taylor (@FollowAlisonT)
• Director, Climate Change, David Wei (@ClimateWei)
• Associate Director, Chhavi Ghuliani (@cghuliani)
• Associate Director, David Korngold
• Associate Director, Consumer Sectors, Jorgette Mariñez (@JorgetteBSR)
• Associate Director, Inclusive Economy, Susan Winterberg (@susanwinterberg)
• Manager, Byron Austin (@byronaustinCSR)
• Manager, Sara Enright (@sgenright)
• Manager, Jonathan Morris (@tweetmorris)
• Manager, Meghan Ryan (@MeghanClareRyan)
• Associate, Katie Abbott (@kaabbott)
• Associate, Shubha Chandra
• Associate, Martin Lemos (@martineieio) 

We will update this post throughout the week with new information about BSR’s participation, so check back for the latest.

What We’re Hosting

• September 18: BSR is a partner of Business Fights Poverty: Rethinking Collaboration for the SDGs. Gitman will speak and Enright will attend.
• September 19: BSR will host the Responsible Retail Symposium, a one-day event that will offer participants a perspective on the current state and future ambitions of sustainable business practices in the U.S. retail industry. Cramer, Niemtzow, Winterberg, Mariñez, and other members of BSR’s consumer sectors team will attend.

What We're Attending

• September 17: Morris will attend the Social Good Summit, hosted by Mashable.
• September 17: Park and Winterberg will attend the MIT Solve Challenge Finals.
• September 18: Mohapatra will attend a breakfast hosted by Women Deliver and the other Deliver for Good partners.
• September 18: Mohapatra will attend the session “Behind Every Global Goal: Women Leading the World to 2030,” hosted by the Business Commission, at the International Conference on Sustainable Development.
• September 18: Cramer will attend the Climate Week NYC 2017 Opening Ceremony.
• September 18: Mundle and Austin will attend an event on "Addressing Multiple Chronic Conditions."
• September 18: Cramer and Winterberg will attend a dinner for the World Economic Forum’s New Vision for Development Competition.
• September 18: Crawford will attend Business for the SDGs: Innovation, Technology, and Connectivity for a Better Future for All, hosted at the UN Headquarters.
• September 18: Ryan will attend Modern Slavery in the Americas: From Here to Elimination, hosted by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre.
• September 18: Abbott will attend Building Ambition to 2050: Taking Action Toward 100% Net Zero Carbon Buildings, hosted by The Climate Group.
• September 18: Wei will attend Bold Solutions: How Innovation and Creativity Are Tackling Climate Change, hosted by Purpose.
• September 18: Cramer and Gitman will attend Nightcap at the Museum, hosted by the B Team.
• September 18: Cramer will attend a reception hosted by the Abraaj Group.
• September 18-19: Cramer will moderate a panel on inclusive innovation at the World Economic Forum Sustainable Development Impact Summit. Winterberg will also attend.
• September 18-19: Taylor will represent the Maritime Anti-Corruption Network and speak at the Concordia Annual Summit. She and Crawford will also attend the event "Toward a New Trust: Serving Public Interests through Transparency and Integrity," hosted by B Team.
• September 19: Hodges will attend a private consultation on corporate benchmarks for the SDGs, hosted by the UN Foundation.
• September 19: Wei will attend VELOCITY: Accelerating Climate Action, hosted by The Climate Group, Formula E, VICE Impact, and Spring Studios.
• September 19: Mundle will attend an event on "Shaping the Future of Health and Healthcare," hosted by the World Economic Forum.
• September 19: Cramer will attend a climate dinner hosted by California Governor Jerry Brown and the UN Foundation.
• September 19: Wei will attend a discussion on NDC enhancement.
• September 19: Mohapatra will attend a reception hosted by Women Deliver and the Government of Canada to build momentum for the next Women Deliver Conference.
• September 19: Mundle and Austin will attend a session on "Supporting Maternal Health During the Refugee Crisis."
• September 19: Chandra will attend the launch of the ILO’s Global Estimates of Modern Slavery and Child Labor.
• September 20: Morris will attend Tackling Climate Risk with Climate Action, hosted by MSCI.
• September 20: Mariñez will attend Going “All In” to Address Commodity-Driven Deforestation, hosted by the Tropical Forest Alliance 2020 and Forest Trends.
• September 20: Enright will attend a dinner hosted by Sustainia, DNV GL, and the UN Global Compact.
• September 20: Ghuliani will attend the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Goalkeepers event.
• September 20: Korngold will attend Business Solutions for the SDGs, organized by the UN Development Programme, Business Call to Action, and the UN Global Compact.
• September 20: Gitman will attend WE Day UN.
• September 20: Wei will attend an evening gathering of friends of We Mean Business.
• September 21: Cramer will attend the launch of the World Benchmarking Alliance, hosted by Aviva, the UN Foundation, and Index Initiative.
• September 21: Wei will attend Accelerating Ambitious Climate Policy Globally: The Role of Corporations, hosted by InfluenceMap.
• September 21: Mohapatra will attend the UN Global Compact Leaders Summit.
• September 21: Park will attend We the Future: Accelerating Sustainable Development Solutions, hosted by the Skoll Foundation, TED, and the UN Foundation.
• September 21: Taylor will attend Building an International Coalition against Corruption to Achieve the SDGs, hosted by the Danish Minister for Development Cooperation.

Blog | Thursday September 14, 2017

How Business Can Help Build Climate Resilience Today

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Around the world, we are experiencing record-breaking extreme weather events—from monsoon flooding in South Asia, to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma the United States and Caribbean islands, severe flooding in Nigeria, and Typhoon Hato here in Hong Kong and southern China. The loss of life, displacement, and financial damage are devastating.

While seasonal storms are nothing new, climate change is expected to make them more powerful. Warmer temperatures elicit more rainfall, and storm surge is worsened by sea-level rise. When combined with, in some cases, poor urban planning, existing socioeconomic vulnerabilities, and lack of preparation, these stronger storms can cause significant damage.

The recent and ongoing events illustrate for many of us the very real impacts of climate change. This begs the question: are those of us who work in or for the private sector doing everything we can to prepare for and build resilience to future weather- and climate-related impacts?

The private sector faces a range of climate risks that can affect overarching strategies, finances, human resources, and sales. And businesses are exposed to these risks throughout their operations, supply chains, and communities where they work. Companies rely on suppliers and communities around the world for both human and natural capital including land, water, and a consistent energy supply, among other critical resources. Simply put, the range of impacts from climate change can directly affect business continuity.

Catastrophic weather events or natural disasters can serve as “trigger events”—prompting (rightfully) an uptick in support from governments, businesses, and communities to aid relief and recovery efforts and “build back better” homes, schools, and roadways. But preparation can dramatically reduce the cost of recovery—studies show that for every US$1 spent to mitigate risks, US$4 is saved on recovery costs. We are not seeing the same level of investment or urgency to proactively prepare for extreme weather events and build climate resilience as we see for recovery.

As Alice Hill of U.S. President Obama’s National Security Council recently lamented, it took eight years and the destruction of Hurricane Sandy to agree on federal building standards to protect against floods. Despite this, President Trump revoked the flood protection rule 10 days before Harvey made landfall.

While “trigger events” can drive us to act, the implications of climate change for business go beyond extreme weather. Gradual, slow-onset climate events—sea-level rise, increasing temperatures, ocean acidification, glacial retreat and related impacts, salinization, land and forest degradation, loss of biodiversity, and desertification—are also affecting business in myriad ways.

For example, salinization, brought on by sea-level rise, is shrinking rice yields in Vietnam, Bangladesh, and other major rice-producing markets, which in turn affects global commodity supply chains and threatens food security. Salinity can also cause structural damage to buildings, equipment, and roads, which can impact the production and transport of goods and services.

To build their resilience to salinization, businesses can protect or install a combination of green and gray infrastructure: wetlands and forests act as natural barriers, and drainage systems and subsurface barriers can stop the flow of contaminants. In the agriculture industry, farmers can diversify crops and livelihoods to help maintain or build financial security; investments in new research could help uncover alternative solutions such as salt-tolerant crops.

Given that we’re experiencing the impacts of climate change today, it’s important that we invest in climate resilience. Here are three ways businesses can start building their adaptive capacities:

1. Assess and disclose climate risk: In addition to assessing both gradual and sudden climate hazards, businesses should take inventory of their exposure and vulnerability throughout their operations, supply chains, and communities. Poor infrastructure and communication channels, existing labor issues, low-income communities, and social injustices are a few examples of vulnerabilities that can exacerbate climate risk. Disclosing risks can help companies generate awareness of issues, facilitate goal-setting for risk mitigation, and identify opportunities to collaboratively address challenges.
2. Leverage expertise: Businesses should consider leveraging their knowledge and skills to build resilience throughout their value chains. For example, real estate developers can partner with city planners to solve for local vulnerabilities, such as planting trees to provide shade in hot environments and investing in safe and secure infrastructure like permeable pavers to reduce flooding.
3. Empower individuals: Companies can up-level their civic engagement by empowering individuals to build personal resilience to climate change. For example, information and communications technology and financial services companies can collaborate with local governments to expand access to information and insurance for at-risk populations, including women, people with disabilities, the elderly, poor, homeless, and outdoor workers, among others.

As affected communities assess the damage brought on by the recent extreme weather events and work together to heal and recover, let’s take action within the businesses where we work. Let’s ask ourselves how we can make sure our companies and our communities are prepared.

With thoughtful, proactive, and collaborative efforts, we can build the resilience that’s essential for today’s climate reality. Learn more and get your business involved on our climate change page.

Blog | Wednesday September 13, 2017

Emerging Human Rights Issues for the Transport and Logistics Sector

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While for many transport and logistics (T&L) companies, climate change is at the top of the sustainability agenda, human rights is increasingly a strategic theme. These two issues are important for businesses across industries: in fact, as we learned from the 2017 BSR/GlobeScan State of Sustainable Business Survey, climate change and human rights are most companies’ top sustainability priorities.

To reflect this increasing focus on human rights, BSR has published a business and human rights primer that identifies the top 10 human rights challenges for the transport and logistics sector, as well as emerging risks and opportunities for the industry to promote human rights.

Ensuring mobility and trade comes with tremendous social and economic impacts, and the T&L sector plays an essential role in connecting countries and spreading technologies. The industry is key for the performance of other sectors of the economy: For example, manufacturing and agriculture (to name only two) both depend on the ability to ship their goods to consumers in a quick, cost-effective, and reliable way.

In addition, transport subsectors—roads, railways, and civil aviation—employ many workers in a wide range of job categories. Because of this, the T&L sector strongly influences the economic performance of other industries and countries and contributes to value creation and national competitiveness, which means that overall it has an immense opportunity to promote human rights and the sustainable development agenda.

As we think about the many changes shaping the world around us, whether as a result of trade, climate change, globalization, automation, or a combination of these factors, here are a few emerging human rights topics for T&L companies to keep on their radars:

• Working Conditions in Ship Breaking: NGOs are increasingly highlighting the risks of child labor, forced labor, and environmental pollution in ship breaking—the NGO Shipbreaking Platform is one example of this. The T&L sector is seen as responsible for impacts throughout the entire lifecycle of its operations, and this includes disposal of material and equipment.
• Transport of Migrants: Every year, millions of people decide to leave their homes to escape conflict or persecution—or simply to improve their lives. This decision often involves transport and carries with it huge risks. T&L companies should understand the increasing human rights risks they face due to this worldwide trend, as well as the opportunities to promote and secure the rights of this often highly vulnerable population.  
• Accessible and Affordable Public Transport: For many poor people, public transport is their only link to jobs, family, and social services—and one of their greatest costs. The T&L industry can play a key role in promoting access to public transport and, ultimately, access to opportunity.
• Conflict-Affected Areas: Building or restoring transport infrastructure is one of the first steps in the post-conflict recovery process. While these environments can be extremely challenging, they also represent one of the most significant ways that T&L companies can contribute their expertise to development.
• Promoting the Circular Economy: Logistics plays a critical role in implementing circular economy models that minimize the use of resources and reduce carbon footprint. As a technology-intensive industry, the T&L sector should be at the forefront of developing innovative models to reduce waste, reuse industrial byproducts, and invest in renewable energies.

If you’d like to continue this conversation around these topics and others, please join us at the BSR 2017 Conference in Huntington Beach, California. The following three sessions in particular will explore the transport and logistics sector and its relationship to human rights:

• Human Trafficking and Modern Day Slavery
• Protecting Workers on the Move
• Transportation of Tomorrow

We look forward to seeing you there.

Blog | Monday September 11, 2017

Q&A: The Future of Sustainability Management

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To kick off a Q&A series with our experts on the past, present, and future of sustainable business, we sat down with our Sustainability Management lead Alison Taylor to discuss innovations, opportunities, and challenges in the field.

Elisabeth Best: What has been the single most important innovation in sustainability management in the last 25 years? 

Alison Taylor: The last 25 years have really seen the emergence, traction, and now maturing of corporate sustainability as a whole, and this has been a transformational process. Conceptually, this has meant a shift in companies moving from addressing risk as a way to reduce their ‘negative externalities’ to the idea of sustainability as a driver of innovation, growth, competitive advantage, public trust, and (ultimately) long-term survival.

The most visible and concrete innovation over 25 years is that large companies now have a corporate responsibility or sustainability function. This has been accompanied by clear commitments to international norms and efforts to measure and report on their efforts. For disclosure specifically, 25 years ago, we were making it up as we went along; today, standards exist. However, it will take another 25 years for those standards to mature to the point where they are as robust as financial disclosures.

Sustainability is increasing in importance for CEOs: In the 2017 BSR/Globescan survey on the state of sustainable business, 52 percent of companies cite sustainability as a top-five CEO priority, up from 37 percent just two years ago.

Best: What does sustainable business, specifically as it relates to sustainability management, look like in 2030? 

Taylor: By 2030, I’d simply hope that sustainable business is synonymous with good business. Does this mean that the sustainability function will disappear? Not necessarily. But I would hope that we are spending less energy trying to demonstrate the relevance and benefits of our efforts and can instead direct that energy toward driving innovation and organizational change to meet society’s biggest challenges.

Best: What’s the biggest challenge or opportunity you see looking forward?

Taylor: Sustainable business is fundamentally about managing organizations to survive and thrive over the long term, which considers that business value and societal value are ultimately aligned. But these concepts are very difficult to translate into how companies behave and operate today. Human beings have limited memory and attention, are highly social, and tend to focus on short-term, concrete goals over long-term, conceptual ambitions. Successful companies will need to address the challenges presented by these behaviors and incentives in a very deliberate way. Many will not succeed, which means huge opportunity for those that do.

Best: What are leading companies doing today to make a sustainable future a reality? 

Taylor: Examples of future-oriented sustainability efforts are everywhere. I’m fascinated by how companies are working to bring external perspectives into their strategies, innovations, and social impact efforts. Our increasingly hyper-transparent world can seem threatening, and many companies are struggling to manage the reputational challenges that this presents. But others are taking advantage of the new opportunities to work more closely with their stakeholders to tackle systemic challenges. A sustainable future means anticipating emerging societal and environmental needs—and that requires much broader and more inclusive engagement.

That said, I think even the organizations held up as poster children for sustainability would acknowledge that this is a journey, and we all have much to learn from each other.

Best: What aspect of this year’s BSR Conference are you most excited about?

Taylor: I always have a brilliant time at Conference catching up with colleagues and friends from BSR and our member companies. To have a phenomenal speaker line-up and California beach setting as well? What an incredible way to spend the working week. 

Interested in participating in more conversations like this? Register today to join us at the BSR Conference 2017: How Business Leads in Huntington Beach, California, on October 24-26.