Climate change,Sustainability & Corporate Social Responsibility - 26 Mar 2014

Climate change ,
Sustainability &
Corporate Social
Responsibility
A discussion Starter
-- Sumit Mathur
March 2014
Copyright@Sumit Mathur http://in.linkedin.com/pub/sumit-mathur/5/686/b2 http://www.slideshare.net/sumitmathur80
PhotoCredit:http://www.motherearthnews.com/

Content
 Climate Change
 Why should organizations be concerned?
 Sustainability
 How can organizations contribute?
 Long term sustainability - CSR
 Triple Bottom Line

Climate Change
PhotoCredit:https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk//

Climate Change
 Climate change is very much a reality
 Will present us with challenges over the coming century
 In its Third Assessment Report the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change concluded that:
 "Overall, climate change is projected to increase threats to human
health, particularly in lower income populations, predominantly
within tropical/subtropical countries."

Climate Change
 Climate change can affect human health
 Direct Impacts of thermal stress, death/injury in floods and storms
etc.
 Indirectly through changes in the ranges of disease vectors (e.g.,
mosquitoes), water-borne pathogens, water quality, air quality,
food availability and quality
 Actual health impacts strongly influenced by
 Local environmental conditions
 Socio-economic circumstances, and by
 Range of social, institutional, technological, and behavioural
adaptations taken to reduce the full range of threats to health

 Broadly, a change in climatic conditions can have three kinds
of health impacts:
 Direct : usually caused by weather extremes.
 Indirect : The health consequences of various processes of
environmental change and ecological disruption that occur in
response to climate change.
 The diverse health consequences – traumatic, infectious, nutritional,
psychological and other – that occur in demoralized and displaced
populations in the wake of climate-induced economic dislocation,
environmental decline, and conflict situations.

Why should organizations
be concerned?
PhotoCredit:http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au//

 Reputation, market share, cost control, competition for talent
and ethical standards
 Need to keep up with the changing times and with the socio-
economic developments
 Climate change also represents an unprecedented and highly
complex threat to long-term economic interests across the
spectrum of financial and industrial activities
 The increasing frequency of extreme climatic events, coupled
with social trends, has the potentiality to stress insurers, re-
insurers and banks to the point of impaired viability or even
insolvency

Sustainability
 Sustainability is a critical business issue
 Has the potential to be a differentiator in an organization’s ability to
manage risk, create and protect enterprise value, and drive growth
and innovation.
 More and more organizations are voluntarily adopting environmentally
sustainable practices and engaging their employees to help them
manage carbon emissions and compete in a world of limited resources.
 Leading companies stay well ahead of regulations and guidelines,
spearheading the drive for transparency.
 An increasing number of companies willingly submit their
sustainability-related reporting to a degree of scrutiny similar to
that of their financial statements

How can organizations contribute to
Sustainability & reduce effects of
climate change?
CSR – Leading the way to a sustainable future
PhotoCredit:www.greenhotelier.org

CSR
 A way that businesses manage the economic, social and
environmental impacts of their operations
 Maximise the benefits and minimise the downsides
 Driven by both Government and businesses in their activities
related to:
 Governance
 Ethics
 Health and safety
 Environment
 Human rights, labour, culture, minorities
 Sustainability
 Accountability
 Customer satisfaction

 Organizations can and do undertake a variety of initiatives under the
CSR route:
 Spreading awareness on social issues
 Helping rural development
 Provision of health and sanitation services
 Creating employment opportunities
 Educating & training people
 Developing roads, water tanks and other infrastructure etc.
 An effective approach to CSR can enhance brand and company
reputation by
 Improving efficiency
 Reducing the risk of business disruptions
 Opening up new opportunities driving innovation

The Triple Bottom Line for
long-term sustainability
toCredit:www.communitykirklees.org.uk/

Triple bottom line concept
 More commonly known as ‘People, Planet and Profit’
approach – the three pillars of sustainability
 The phrase, “People, Planet, Profit", was coined by John
Elkington in 1995
 Was later adopted as the title of the Anglo-Dutch oil company
Shell's first sustainability report in 1997
 As a result, one country in which the 3P concept took deep root was
The Netherlands.

Triple bottom line concept
 Often environmental sustainability is the more profitable course for a
business in the long run
 Arguments that it costs more to be environmentally sound are often
specious
 Generally sustainability reporting metrics are better quantified and
standardized for environmental issues than for social ones
 A number of respected reporting institutes and registries exist including
the Global Reporting Initiative, CERES, Institute 4 Sustainability etc.

People
 Pertains to fair and beneficial business practices toward labour
and the community and region in which a corporation
conducts its business.
 A triple bottom line enterprise would
 Seek to benefit many constituencies, not exploit or endanger any
group of them.
 Up stream a portion of profit from the marketing of finished goods
back to the original producer of raw materials
 Not use child labour and monitor all contracted companies for child
labour exploitation

People
 A triple bottom line enterprise would
 Pay fair salaries to its workers
 Maintain a safe work environment and tolerable working hours
 Typically seek to "give back" by contributing to the strength and
growth of its community with such things as health care and
education
 Quantifying this bottom line is relatively new, problematic and
often subjective.
 The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has developed guidelines
to enable corporations and NGOs alike to comparably report
on the social impact of a business.

Planet
 Refers to sustainable environmental practices
 A TBL company endeavours to
 Benefit the natural order as much as possible
 Minimise environmental impact
 Reduce its ecological footprint by
 Carefully managing its consumption of energy and non-
renewables
 Reducing manufacturing waste as well as rendering waste less
toxic before disposing of it in a safe and legal manner

Planet
 A TBL company endeavours to
 Conduct a life cycle assessment of products to determine what the
true environmental cost is
 From the growth and harvesting of raw materials to manufacture
to distribution to eventual disposal by the end user
 Not produce harmful or destructive products
 Weapons, toxic chemicals or batteries containing dangerous
heavy metals etc.

Planet
 In TBL thinking, an enterprise which produces and markets a
product which will create a waste problem should not be given
a free ride by society
 It would be more equitable for the business which manufactures and
sells a problematic product to bear part of the cost of its ultimate
disposal
 Ecologically destructive practices, such as overfishing or other
endangering depletions of resources are avoided by TBL
companies

Profit
 It differs from traditional accounting definitions of profit
 In the original concept, within a sustainability framework, the
"profit" aspect needs to be seen as the real economic benefit
enjoyed by the host society.
 An original TBL approach cannot be interpreted as simply
traditional corporate accounting profit plus social and
environmental impacts unless the "profits" of other entities are
included as a social benefit
 It is the real economic impact the organization has on its economic
environment

End of Presentation
PhotoCredit:http://suegraber.com/hope/

Climate change,Sustainability & Corporate Social Responsibility - 26 Mar 2014

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