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American FMCG titan Procter & Gamble (P&G) is partnering with Habitat for Humanity to fund the construction, repair, and cleaning of homes in 12 countries around the world.

The commitment represents Habitat’s highest level of global volunteer engagement in a single year, with nearly 3,000 P&G employees volunteering alongside Habitat partner families in countries including the US, Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa, Poland and Costa Rica.

In the Philippines, for example, five homes are being built and families provided with critical training on financial literacy, sanitation and hygiene while in the US, P&G will provide a gift basket of family and home care products to all new Habitat families – an estimated 6,000. Baskets include products like Charmin, Dawn and Tide.

“For the past 175 years, Procter & Gamble has focused on turning houses into homes,” Brian Sasson, global manager of social investments at P&G told Ethical Performance. He said that the gift basket initiative is to be taken a step further soon with the inclusion of a new booklet which is aimed at first-time home owners as a quick resource on how to look after the home. Starting in the US and Latin America , the guide will cover areas such as air conditioning and heating systems as well more fundamental issues “like taking care of your yard” Sasson explained.

Sasson agreed that P&G brands get a lot of positive reputation associations out of its social responsibility policy and that it was an important part of it. The company does look at the ROI of its programmes. “We look at how many people we can help and how many people we do help. We measure outputs and are looking at how we develop those metrics,” Sasson said.

He explained that there were two strands to his role: setting social responsibility strategy (looking at where the corporation will invest its money) and looking at implementing that strategy. He also looks at who P&G should work with and fosters partnerships with organizations such as Save The Children, World Vision and the Red Cross. P&G has been partnering with Habitat for Humanity for close to10 years.

“Disaster relief is an area where P&G can have tremendous value,” Sasson said and revealed that the next big challenge was within personal care, where the company is ramping up its efforts with the introduction of a personal care kit for disaster areas and people who have been displaced (the kit uses P&G personal care brands). “We are currently scaling that up. Hundreds of employees have recently been putting together those kits and put aside for when they are needed,” he said.

Sasson is thrilled that 3000 employees have already stepped up to the volunteering challenge and is hoping for steady, significant growth of that number in 2014 [the 3000 applies only to the Habitat programme]: “We have 127,000 employees around the world and we need to harness those talents and pitch those resources against solving society’s challenges and issues.”
 

Sandra Kerr, OBE, director of Race for Opportunity, the race equality campaign from Business in the Community, tells Ethical Performance why diversity is key to the responsible business model 

How important is diversity within a business’s CSR remit?
Responsible Business can only truly be so if it is being inclusive and ‘responsible’ with its own employees and in how it engages with the diversity of their communities, customers, clients and service users.

In recent times what businesses have impressed you with regards to their diversity programmes?
Organisations that have impressed me are those that are Champion members of the campaign that have integrated diversity into their core business strategy, understand their unique diversity challenges in order to implement targeted action, and are delivering real impact as well as continuously demonstrating their commitment to equality.

Where do you think most businesses are getting it right (when it comes to race diversity)?
Any business that is getting it right will be monitoring its workforce at every level and taking action to ensure that there is a diverse demographic of people within their workforce that matches the talent pool of the diverse communities across the UK.

The Business in the Community Gender and Race Benchmarking 2013 demonstrated three areas where businesses are getting it right. Those organisations that mandate unconscious bias training for those individuals or teams involved in recruitment, have clear and current objectives for recruitment of BAME talent, and provide transparent selection criteria for job roles, have better results in engaging and recruiting diverse candidates.

And where are they getting it wrong?
Not taking action. Not implementing any key performance indicators and not evaluating the impact of their actions. Not identifying areas where there are challenges that may need a more focused approach. Not understanding the diversity of the communities in which they operate and from where a growing number of their customers will emerge and that a ‘one size fits all’ approach may not be the best one.

What are the main challenges in CSR today?
Ensuring that diverse communities are benefiting from employer engagement activities at local level. For example, in the engagement to develop employability skills or support local entrepreneurs, all of which can in turn help to regenerate communities.

Ensure that an organisation’s employees are aware of the need to engage with all the diverse groups of people within the community and equipping them with the knowledge and skills to enable them to do this with confidence.

Do you admire any other companies in particular for their approach to CSR?
Marks & Spencer, the 2012 Responsible Business of the year for its recognition of the importance of employee engagement, particularly initiatives such as Schwopping that everyone can get involved with, and for putting Plan A at the heart of its business.

National Grid for its commitment to tackling youth unemployment. It is spearheading a new initiative, Generation Talent, from Business in the Community’s Talent & Skills campaign, which will work with the Department of Work & Pensions to help jobseekers by providing practical help for companies in their promotion of vacancies to the unemployed.

Some say the CSR debate has plateaued, do you agree?
I disagree. I think the next conversation is about inclusive CSR. Ensuring that you know the diversity of the communities in which you operate and ensuring that you engage all parts of it.

How do you see the evolution and future of CSR?
A greater engagement of partners in the UK and internationally via supply chains

If you could influence one major change in the way British business operates, what would it be?
To get diversity and inclusion into the corporate DNA and to raise employer consciousness of the importance of inclusion. I would like business to always check that they are being as inclusive as they can be as an employer, community volunteer and service provider. One of the most effective ways of influencing this is to build the requirements into the supply chain.
 

Business in 2013 is increasingly aware that it is no longer possible to be competitive without being sustainable. But sustainability reporting in 2013 is about more than transparency and accountability alone. Whether it be risks in the supply chain or the effects of resource scarcity, sustainability issues are strategic issues for businesses as well as their stakeholders – from investors to the communities in which they operate. In this sense the reporting of non-financial information not only informs and empowers; it has the capacity to transform, preparing businesses for the sustainability challenges that the economy of tomorrow will bring.

But in order for sustainability reporting to live up to this promise, it is crucial that the information contained within sustainability reports is focused and relevant, and that it addresses the sustainability-related issues that are most critical to businesses and their stakeholders, in order to drive change.

For this reason, sustainability reporting must continually evolve. In May 2013, GRI launched the next generation of its Sustainability Reporting Guidelines - G4. The launch marked the culmination of two years of extensive stakeholder consultation and dialogue with a diverse constituency of experts from across the world. The aim of G4 is simple: to help reporters prepare sustainability reports that matter – and to make such robust and purposeful sustainability reporting standard practice.

A sustainability report conveys disclosures on an organization's impacts – be they positive or negative – on the environment, society and the economy. Yet a robust sustainability report is far more than a data gathering or compliance exercise. By making abstract issues tangible and concrete, reporting helps organizations to set goals, measure performance, and manage change. The insights generated can have direct relevance for C-suite decision making, with the potential to spark operational improvement and innovation, and inform core business strategy.
To support organizations on this strategic journey, G4 places the concept of materiality at the heart of sustainability reporting. This means encouraging organizations to provide only disclosures and indicators that are material to their business, on the basis of a dialogue with their stakeholders.

This will result in sustainability reports that are centered on the issues that are really critical in order to achieve the organization’s goals and manage its impact on society - reports that are more strategic, more focused and more credible. In short, G4 reports should concentrate on what really matters, and the process of compiling them will require companies to think and act strategically. This in turn should help to curtail greenwashing, as reports produced following the materiality principle are less likely to camouflage problems among good news stories and initiatives.

Sustainability reporting is a journey. It is not a question of ‘pass’ or ‘fail’. In a world of complex challenges in which change is sometimes the only constant, no organization has all the answers at any one time.
G4 is designed to reflect this. It is quite possible that an organization may identify material topics for which it does not yet have a policy or even a monitoring system. A report that acknowledges this, identifying and disclosing risks, and outlining transparently the challenges that the company faces and the steps it needs to take to address them, is entirely consistent with the goals of G4.

The key here is integration into the business strategy and business model. G4 encourages organizations to view sustainability as a major strategic issue and an operational imperative, and to embed sustainability considerations into the everyday life of the business.

The transition to this way of thinking may require some companies to re-evaluate their approach to reporting. But it will also empower them. GRI is convinced that by taking a more strategic and materiality-based approach, reporting organizations - and their stakeholders - will get much greater value out of reporting, and a greater return for the resources they invest.
 

Ernst Litgteringen, Chief Executive of the Global Reporting Initiative

New IBE research has shown an apparent lack of explicit engagement at EU level with ethical principles in corporate governance guidance. There is limited requirement, or indeed encouragement, for boards to operate with high ethical standards. Leading edge companies increasingly recognise that embedding business ethics, sustainability and social responsibility throughout their operations as being essential for long term success. But boards can lag behind when it comes to examining their own behaviours and how ethical values ought to apply within the board room.

What can boards do to avoid their own integrity failures and actively demonstrate that they are committed to ethical standards in the way they govern and conduct themselves?

Purpose, strategy and vision
The choices made by senior leaders are open to analysis by all stakeholders, and there is a very real potential that board members could be pursued individually in the courts for any decisions they make. This means that mechanisms need to be introduced which will facilitate the consideration of the ethical dimensions of board decisions. This is the perspective that asks the question ‘how does this fit with our values and the way we do our business?’

Few directors would query the need for strong ethics and compliance within their business, but the need remains for rigorous ways to help them engage with their own decision-making processes.

Persuading boards to put the promotion of ‘how business should be done’ on a par with core operating strategies is a significant challenge. The challenge is how to define an ethical approach and then to apply it. It can take a great deal of courage on the part of a board, and sometimes be ‘costly’, to embed ethical thinking within strategy.

Tough issues like operating in territories with questionable human rights records, require boards to be equipped with ethical sensitivity and the right leadership skills. Although a company might say “we will not do business in countries where there is a risk of us becoming involved in human rights abuses”; or “we will not do business if it contravenes our ethical values”, in practice, these statements are difficult to deliver on. It is easier if the strategy can be explained clearly to the company’s shareholders and wider group of stakeholders using the company’s code of ethics as a reference point. (Anglo American’s decision to invest $400 million in a mining project in Zimbabwe is one example.)

The distorting influence of time pressures should not be underestimated when it comes to encouraging an ethical dimension to board decisions. Offering training in ethical decision-making or away day sessions on ethical issues and risks for the company will give board members the opportunity to consider these matters in a neutral and reflective space. The building of ethics into strategic reviews will, over time, become part of the board psyche.

Example and leadership
The continual reference to and demonstration of ethical values and by board members are essential if a board wishes the rest of the organisation to operate in line with a set of core values, and for it to enjoy the benefits which doing business ethically can bring.

It goes without saying that members of boards should have personal integrity, as well as being champions of the company’s values. So, recruiting the right board members with the experience and ethical acumen to support the organisation is a good way to ensure that ethics is part of the language of the board.

Oversight and controls
In order for the directors to influence the ethical culture, they need first to establish meaningful values for the company and develop the policies, mechanisms and controls, an ‘ethics programme’, that support employees in making ethical choices. They need to understand the ethical challenges that employees face and the pressures that might drive them to cross ethical lines.

The board needs to know what is truly happening both within the company and its sector in order to make sound judgements in the best interests of the company,. As part of this, directors need to monitor the extent to which the company is really living up to its stated values, otherwise all pronouncements on ethics will be viewed as flimsy and without substance. Using monitoring and assurance tools, such as the Investing in Integrity charter mark (www.investinginintegrity.org.uk), checks that the boxes are ticked, but it also assesses the extent to which the company is doing what it says it does ethically, as well as financially.
Ethical assurance and monitoring are vital risk management tools; as we have seen in recent years, risks to integrity do need to be deemed a threat to financial performance.

Summary
The board’s role is to give direction. It is vital that it provides an ethical compass for the organisation that it oversees especially when executives, immersed in the day-to-day business of the company, may be unable to do so. It is vital that board members are aware of the ethical issues and challenges affecting their sector, their company, their executives and their staff. They must continually develop their own ethical sensitivity and acumen, and use it actively to strengthen the culture and mitigate integrity risk - as a preventative measure and not just so as to be able to handle the ethical lapses once they have happened. Above all, they must look to themselves. To coin a phrase “ethics begins at home”: if the board are confident that their own way of governing has ethics at its core, the rest will surely follow.

A Review of the Ethical Aspects of Corporate Governance Regulation and Guidance in the EU by Julia Casson is available as a free download from IBE’s website http://www.ibe.org.uk/userfiles/op8_corpgovineu.pdf
IBE’s Good Practice Guide: Ethics in Decision-making by David Barr and Chris Campbell is available here 

Written by Dr Nicole Dando, head of projects at the Institute of Business Ethics
 

Russia can expect environmental bodies to protest that its planned extraction of oil and gas in the Arctic off the Siberian coast would do enormous harm to the area’s thriving polar bear and walrus populations.

Rosneft, Russia’s biggest publicly traded oil company, has already begun seismic explorations in the Laptev Sea stretch of the Arctic Ocean. Huge deposits are virtually certain to be found, and large-scale production could begin during the next 20 years.

However, the fear is that exploration, drilling and industrial activity will unsettle the polar bears and walruses and reduce their food supply. Many of the animals have been forced ashore anyway because climate change has dramatically shrunk the Arctic ice cap.

In addition, conservationists think the growth of an oil industry in the Arctic will encourage more hunting and add to the destabilisation of the balance of nature.

At the same time, WWF, the international conservation NGO, is worried that if there should be an oil spill in the Arctic it would be hard to control, and would cause further damage to the natural habitat and poison the animals.
WWF believes alternative sustainable sources, not oil, should provide the world’s energy, but argues for safeguards if fossil fuels are to be extracted.

Igor Chestin, WWF’s chief executive in Russia, said: “Before the real oil and gas projects develop in the area we need to know that there is sufficient knowledge of the conservation needs here, which would allow us to put in the necessary protection.”

Rod Downie, head of WWF UK’s marine and polar programme, said his organisation was likely to lobby directly Rosneft and any other companies that become involved. He emphasised: “We think the risk and potential impacts are irresponsible.”

The environmentalists now see yet more threats to the area’s wildlife and ecosystem from the China-to-Europe commercial shipping in the seas north of Siberia. This traffic has become far busier thanks to the melting of the ice cap, increasing from four ships in 2010 to 400 projected this year.

WWF’s challenge coincides with the Russian storming of the Greenpeace International icebreaker Arctic Sunrise in the Pechora Sea about 1,500 miles to the west.

Russian commandoes wearing balaclavas dropped by ropes from a helicopter on to the ship have arrested the 30 Greenpeace activists on board.

Greenpeace is protesting about attempts by the Russian Gazprom company to drill for oil in that stretch of sea, which contains three nature reserves protected by Russian law.

The Russians are threatening a piracy prosecution. Greenpeace rejects piracy claims as the charge does cannot be applied to peaceful actions. The Russian foreign ministry said: “The intruders’ actions … had the outward signs of extremist activity that can lead to people’s deaths.”

Russia also summoned the Dutch ambassador demanding a halt to such protests – the ship is Netherlands-registered.

Greenpeace official Jasper Teulings said that as the ship was outside territorial waters the raid lacked justification. He said: “This looks like a retrospective attempt to create that justification and avoid embarrassment.”

Gazprom already has a platform in the planned drilling area. Four Greenpeace protesters who scaled the platform earlier have already been arrested.

Ben Ayliffe, head of Greenpeace International’s Arctic oil campaign, responded: “It’s clear that oil companies receive special protection from the Russian authorities, who seem more interested in silencing peaceful activists than protecting the Arctic from reckless companies like Gazprom.”
 

Wasting 1.3 billion tons of food causes huge economic losses and a lot of needless hunger, but there are climate environmental issues deeply connected to food waste, according to a report from the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

FAO’s Food Wastage Footprint: Impacts on Natural Resources is the first study to analyze the impacts of global food wastage from an environmental perspective, looking specifically at its consequences for the climate, water and land use, and biodiversity.

Some key findings from the report:

• The carbon footprint of food produced and not eaten is estimated at 3.3 billion tons of greenhouse gases: making food wastage the third top GHG emitter after the U.S. and China.


• Globally, the blue water footprint (i.e. the consumption of surface and groundwater resources) of food wastage is about 250 cubic kilometers (km3), which is equivalent to the annual water discharge of the Volga river, or three times the volume of Lake Geneva.


• Produced but uneaten food occupies almost 1.4 billion hectares of land; representing nearly 30 percent of the world’s agricultural land area.


• Fifty-four percent of the world's food wastage occurs "upstream" during production, post-harvest handling and storage, according to FAO's study. About 46 percent of it happens "downstream," at the processing, distribution and consumption stages.

While it is difficult to estimate impacts on biodiversity at a global level, the report continues, “food wastage unduly compounds the negative externalities that mono-cropping and agriculture expansion into wild areas create on biodiversity loss, including mammals, birds, fish and amphibians.”

Beyond its environmental impacts, the direct economic consequences to producers of food wastage (excluding fish and seafood) run about $750 billion annually, FAO's 63-page report estimates.

Achim Steiner, UN Environment Program (UNEP) Executive Director, said UNEP and FAO have identified food wastage as a “major opportunity for economies everywhere to assist in a transition towards a low carbon, resource efficient and inclusive Green Economy.”

The report, he continued, “underlines the multiple benefits that can be realized, in many cases through simple and thoughtful measures by, for example, households, retailers, restaurants, schools and businesses that can contribute to environmental sustainability, economic improvements, food security and the realization of the UN Secretary General's Zero Hunger Challenge.”

UNEP and FAO are founding partners of the Think Eat Save - Reduce Your Foodprint campaign that was launched earlier in the year.

"All of us, farmers and fishers; food processors and supermarkets; local and national governments; individual consumers -- must make changes at every link of the human food chain to prevent food wastage from happening in the first place, and re-use or recycle it when we can't," said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva.

"We simply cannot allow one-third of all the food we produce to go to waste or be lost because of inappropriate practices, when 870 million people go hungry every day," he added in statement.

The global volume of food wastage is estimated to be 1.6 billion tons of “primary product equivalents,” while the total wastage for the edible part of food is 1.3 billion tons. Compare that amount against total agricultural production (for food and non-food uses), which is about 6 billion tons.

That’s enough to take one’s breath and appetite away.

Image credit: Dan Gold via Unsplash

Whitbread-owned coffee chain Costa is heading back to the classroom. Costa for Schools (www.costaforschools.com), is a new online tool to support teachers and help students understand more about communities and economies in coffee growing countries.

Developed in conjunction with the Rainforest Alliance, it’s a free resource to teach 11-14 year olds more about the coffee trade. Through an array of community case studies and an interactive map, students will learn about the journey of a coffee bean from start to finish.

Andy Marshall, Costa Corporate Responsibility Director commented: “Costa baristas across the country are often asked by teachers to talk to students about the origins of our beans, so we thought it was time to put a nationwide resource in place so that all teachers can access the same insight from Costa.”

Costa for Schools has been written for UK teachers and is specifically designed in line with current UK secondary curricula. The programme also provides teachers with usable lesson plans and curriculum guidance usable across secondary geography teaching.

“The coffee trade is something everyone should know about as part of a wider awareness of the impact our lifestyles have on the cultures and environments of others,” added Tensie Whelan, president of the Rainforest Alliance.
 

Business in the Community (BITC) is opening up its Workwell benchmark to all companies, regardless of size. The move follows a successful trial of the process with companies listed on the FTSE 100 last year.

The benchmark measures how companies are publically reporting employee engagement and wellbeing.

The 2012 pilot highlighted the need to increase transparency of employee engagement and wellbeing practices to show whether robust people practices are in place to drive long term success.

According to BITC, currently only one third of UK employees are actively engaged in their work and levels of employee stress and anxiety are rising. This is despite clear evidence that workplaces with good levels of wellbeing have higher productivity, greater employee retention and improved customer satisfaction, the business charity maintains.

Stephen Howard, chief executive of BITC, commented: “We hope the 2014 benchmark, which we encourage all responsible companies to take part in, will begin to show improvements in the way employers manage their people and report on their staff engagement and wellbeing, to help create happier, healthier and ultimately more productive workforces. This is fundamental to businesses and individuals.”

Companies participating in the 2014 benchmark receive a detailed and confidential feedback report that provides gap analysis of their performance in comparison to industry peers, as well as making recommendations for improvement.

For more information click here

Picture credit: © Dawn Hudson | Dreamstime Stock Photos
 

Submitted by Guest Contributor

Part one of CSRwire special series: the Future Makers, based on the book.

By Joanna Stefanska Hafenmayer and Wolfgang Hafenmayer

Child of the jungle, engineer, specialist in waste disposal systems and refuse queen, Albina Ruiz Ríos grew up in the San Martin region of Peru. Her childhood was spent between the wild rivers and gigantic trees of the Amazonian jungle.

The Refuse Just Bothers Me!

“I always had the opinion that it was necessary to find new solutions. That is why I wanted to become an engineer,” Albina says. When she was 18, she moved to Lima to study.

She felt disgusted by the huge, noisy city. She lived with her brother's family in a room in El Augustino, one of the many slums in which stranded immigrants live wall-to-wall with criminals.

During her first days in the city, Albina hardly left the house. She was bothered by the gross, stinking refuse heaps that piled up everywhere in the slums, harming the environment and affecting people’s health. Comparing this to the beauty of the jungle, she was appalled. “How could the people in Lima ever be able to live with dignity when they were exposed to such filth and noxious odors every day?”

Seeing Potential Within Her Own Profession

The omnipresent rubbish heaps gave the emerging scientist the idea that she could use her abilities for something other than the construction of new machines or tools.

So, in the early 1990s, Albina started to look into the subject of waste from a scientist’s point of view. She wanted to understand the problem as a system and hoped to solve it. She founded a student workgroup, calculated the health expenses of families living in the slums and spent days in libraries. She spent time in the refuse collection trucks of the well-to-do boroughs of Lima. By doing this, she began to understand the system.

Albina wrote her doctoral thesis on the social and ecological implications of refuse utilization. Her findings drew the attention of the mayor of Lima who consequently offered her a job, in which she was asked to implement her system in a pilot project.

Many were surprised that I wasn’t working for a company and making good money. Helping other people has always been more important to me than money or a career. I always lived in poor area—and in poor areas, it is dirty. In order to make life as bearable as possible, people try to help one another and are often innovative in the way in which they do it.

A Sophisticated System with Many Employment Possibilities

The basic idea of Albina’s system is easy: the inhabitants of the slums usually spend up to US$10 a month on fighting diarrhoea and other hygiene-related illnesses, however, by investing this amount into a functioning waste collection service, they avoid a good portion of these illnesses.

Simultaneously, Albina’s system provides opportunities and income for a number of small-scale enterprises that have sprung up around the waste collection and recycling services. So, while some people pick up the refuse and collect the fees, others separate the waste and recycle a good part of it into new products – which generates a number of jobs. Often these jobs go to women who establish an additional income, for example by composting part of the refuse and later selling it as fertiliser.

Albina manages to turn a chain of resource withdrawal into a chain of resource recovery – thereby creating jobs for the poor at every stage.

As a side product, she provides information on environmental issues. It might seem amazing that 98% of the inhabitants in “her” neighborhoods pay their waste disposal fee, compared to 60% in administration-run neighborhoods. This can probably be ascribed to the fact that the living standard of people goes up noticeably when the negative side effects of the refuse are reduced so dramatically.

“A pile of rubbish is a chance, not just a problem. Plastic, organic waste, cardboard – all that means money!” Albina says. The system in Lima currently offers up to 50,000 jobs for the poorest of the poor and reaches three million people.

A Model Program

With the support of several foundations (see below), Albina’s concept has been extended to several cities in South America and her consultation is being requested all over the world.

The job is hard, but wonderful! Whenever a family gets money with the help of a junk-job and can buy fresh bread or send the kids to school, it is a wonderful feeling for me. Poor people are in need of my work, and I want to change the world for them. My dream is to have clean cities all over the world. Maybe I won’t be alive to see my dream come true, but I believe my children will. At this very moment, our model is being exported to Mexico and Uganda.

The Light and The Dark Side of Entrepreneurship

Albina's path has been long and trying: first she had to fight the prejudice against her job, then the corruption in the different administrative sections of the boroughs, while struggling repeatedly with problems of funding.

Though her systems do operate cost-effectively, their development, documentation and expansion demand initial capital. The permanent search for money, the filing of applications, responding to requests and the tiring negotiations have left their mark in the last 15 years. Today, Albina is supported by several organizations for social entrepreneurship. In 2006, she was awarded the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship and she will use the US$500,000 prize money to export her system to 20 more cities.

With Time, Reputation Settles In

Albina does not object to being called the “Refuse Queen.” After all, she creates hundreds of jobs, helps millions of people avoid sicknesses and horrendous health-care costs they can hardly afford, while beautifying their cities along the way. She would have never imagined all of this as a child, back in the jungle of Peru.

Foundations supporting Albina’s work:

• www.ciudadsaludable.org
• www.ashoka.org/node/3718
• www.schwabfound.org
• www.avina.net/eng
• www.skollfoundation.org/entrepreneur/albina-ruiz

About the Authors:

Joanna Stefanska Hafenmayer is the Managing Director of “MyImpact”, an organisation focusing on helping leaders to realize meaningful careers through coaching and seminars, as well as assessment tools and publications. An expert in the development of corporate responsible leadership programmes, Joanna is also a member of the Board of “Öbu” – the Swiss think-tank for business and sustainability – and leads the Responsible Corporate Leadership (RECOL) Forum, a group of innovative global enterprises in this area. Prior to 2012, she was a member of Microsoft Switzerland’s Executive Board as their Innovation & Sustainability Officer. Joanna was selected as a First Movers Fellow of the Aspen Institute.

Wolfgang Hafenmayer is the Managing Partner of LGT Venture Philanthropy, with a mission to improve the quality of life of less advantaged people. To realize this mission, Wolfgang built a team of 25 investment managers and philanthropy advisors on five continents to identify and support organizations with outstanding social and environmental impact currently improving the quality of life of 7.9 million less advantaged people. Wolfgang has been an Investment Manager with BonVenture, the first social venture fund in German-speaking Europe, and helped set up Forma Futura, a sustainable asset management company.

The global energy industry must play a greater role in the transition to sustainable energy systems if UN goals are to be met, warns a report from the World Energy Council (WEC).

The potential for billions of people benefiting from sustainable energy systems in future decades hangs in the balance without increased private sector support, it says.

The WEC’s 2013 World Energy Trilemma report, Time to get real – the case for sustainable energy investment, is based on interviews with more than 50 policymakers, including energy and environment ministers, leaders in development banks, governments, IGOs and NGOs, plus experts from more than 25 countries.

The policymakers interviewed expressed concern that the lack of global consensus on climate change and a future energy system framework, coupled with dramatic disruptions caused by emerging technologies and rapidly shifting patterns of energy use and supply, make it difficult to develop and implement long-term energy policies. This results in increased risk for industry and investors, which must be addressed if the much-needed energy transition is to be delivered in the future.

The report also reveals the results of the 2013 Energy Sustainability Index. The Energy Sustainability Index within the report is the world’s most comprehensive ranking of countries energy policies and evaluates how well 129 countries balance the three conflicting agendas involved in achieving energy sustainability – what the WEC has called the ‘energy trilemma’; energy security, energy equity and environmental sustainability.

The Index shows that developed countries with higher shares of energy coming from low- and zero-carbon energy sources supported by well-established energy-efficiency programmes, such as Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden, outperform most countries across all three dimensions of the energy trilemma. Nevertheless, it is clear that all countries still struggle to balance all three aspects of the trilemma's currently conflicting agendas.

Only five countries in the top 10 have been awarded a ‘AAA’ score with Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Spain being the only countries that historically demonstrate their ability to manage the trade-offs between the three competing dimensions equally.
 

Picture credit: © Chrisharvey | Dreamstime Stock Photos