UN Sustainable Development Goals: How Companies Stack Up

UN Sustainable Development Goals: How Companies Stack Up

UN Sustainable Development Goals: How Companies Stack Up

Wednesday, March 17, 2021, by  VisualCapitalist.com

 

The UN SDGs: How Companies Stack Up

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing witnessed a breakthrough year in 2020 with the most fund inflows on record.

Importantly, for companies that are judged according to ESG metrics, one way to track their progress is through their alignment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Established in 2012, the UN SDGs are a blueprint for creating a more sustainable future by 2030 that have been adopted by 193 countries worldwide.

As investors and stakeholders pay closer attention to sustainability concerns, this graphic from MSCI breaks down how companies stack up according to their alignment to the UN SDGs.

How Were Companies Measured?

To track companies net contribution to the UN SDGs, companies were scored by their positive or negative contribution to each of the 17 goals.

The 17 UN SDGs are designed to achieve three primary objectives by 2030:

  • Protect the planet
  • End poverty
  • Create prosperity and peace for all

Specifically, the framework centers on a discussion paper that was developed in partnership with the OECD in 2018. Company policies, operations, products and services, and practices are analyzed according to reported and publicly available information.

Tracking the Alignment of Companies

Across a universe of 8,550 companies in the MSCI All Country World Index, constituents were measured from strongly aligned to strongly misaligned to the UN SDGs.

Source: MSCI ESG Research LLC as of August 11, 2020

Broadly speaking, companies fell mostly in the middle—roughly 38% were aligned while almost 55% were misaligned or neutral. Meanwhile, just 0.2% of companies were strongly aligned to the UN SDGs.

Overall, one of the most strongly aligned goals was Responsible Production and Consumption, with 115 companies meeting this criteria. Specifically, these include companies that are building sustainable infrastructure, energy efficiency, or creating green jobs.

Interestingly, the worst performing goal was also Responsible Production and Consumption, with over five times as many companies (598) strongly misaligned. Along with this goal, both Climate Action and Affordable and Clean Energy each had over 500 companies strongly misaligned.

UN SDGs: A Sector Focus

Unsurprisingly, SDG-alignment varied widely according to company sectors.

Educational companies, for instance, represented the highest level of alignment to Gender Equality. Meanwhile, 18% of 425 utilities companies assessed ended up aligning with Clean and Affordable Energy goals.

As one would expect, the energy sector lagged behind. In 2020, fossil fuels were a key source of revenue for 91% of the companies in the energy business. In fact, just three companies derived over 50% of their revenues from green alternatives: REX American Resources, Renewable Energy Group, and Verbio.

A Call to Action?

Despite the growing wave of interest in ESG investing, the reality is that progress to meet the UN SDGs has been slower going than expected.

However, a greater number of individuals, stakeholders, and activists are sounding the alarm. Today, over 3,000 signatories representing trillions in assets under management have committed to the UN Principles of Responsible Investment, which has established six key actions for ESG investing. Now, many companies are required to report their ESG disclosures in Europe.

Along with these key markers of progress, investors can move the dial by tracking a company’s alignment to sustainable development goals.

Article by  VisualCapitalist.com

Sostenibilidad y ODS

Sostenibilidad y ODS

Sostenibilidad y ODS

Monday, March 15, 2021, by Prof. Analia Pastran

 

El Acuerdo de París sobre Acción por el Clima y Transformar nuestro mundo: la Agenda 2030 para el Desarrollo Sostenible son dos hitos importantes alcanzados en 2015, que especifican las acciones que todos, en todo el mundo, debemos realizar para lograr un futuro más igualitario e inclusivo, mientras disfrutamos del crecimiento económico, con una fuerte protección del ambiente. 

Los ODS proporcionan la hoja de ruta global para las necesidades empresariales, de innovación y tecnología (Naciones Unidas, 2018). Los ODS son para las políticas públicas como los hashtags en las redes sociales. Nos proveen de un lenguaje común para conectarnos de forma global de manera más rápida e inteligentemente.

Vivimos en una época de grandes desafíos a nivel global y una carrera contra el tiempo para poder revertir las desigualdades sociales, las inequidades económicas y los desastres naturales. Nuestra generación tiene la oportunidad de ser la generación bisagra que dé lugar a un nuevo paradigma más justo, inclusivo, sostenible y resiliente para las generaciones futuras.

En ese sentido, tal como señala ONU Hábitat es importante desarrollar una Economía Urbana donde los principales esfuerzos se centren en la promoción de estrategias y políticas urbanas que fortalezcan la capacidad de las ciudades para desplegar todo su potencial como impulsoras del desarrollo económico, y de la creación de riqueza y empleo. Con especial atención a la formulación y aplicación de estrategias y políticas urbanas que promuevan e impulsen la participación de hombres y mujeres, mejoren las finanzas municipales y contribuyan a la creación de empleo decente y medios de vida urbanos que, a su vez, propicien un mayor empoderamiento económico, en particular entre los jóvenes y las mujeres.

Es decir, una economía consciente y responsable frente al impacto en el ambiente, que es nuestro primer escenario: el Cambio Climático. Por dicho motivo, cada vez más líderes globales están trabajando en un Global Green New Deal el cual es un llamado a los gobiernos para reducir la huella de carbono, generar empleos bien remunerados, garantizar un aire libre de contaminación, energías renovables, acceso al agua y alimentos como derechos humanos básicos, así como acabar con todas las formas. de degradación. 

La pandemia nos ha dado la oportunidad de repensar la ciudad y la forma de vida que queremos. Ha sido un stand by que nos ha permitido darnos cuenta que lo normal no era precisamente sinónimo de calidad de vida. Y dicho aprendizaje se ha visto potenciado con la solidaridad y empatía de muchas personas que, en estos tiempos difíciles, han sabido transformar esto en oportunidades para vincularse a escala global a través de las nuevas tecnologías y compartir conocimiento y buenas prácticas. Antes esa transmisión de conocimiento implicaba tomar un avión, hacer una conferencia multitudinaria en un lugar específico al cual no todas las personas tenían el acceso o la posibilidad (recursos económicos) para emprender y aprovechar.

En ese marco, aquellos emprendedores y emprendedoras que estén atentos/as a las oportunidades que el mercado y el consumo están generando tendrán oportunidades valiosas de desarrollo. Y más aún, los gobiernos y líderes a nivel mundial tienen la oportunidad de impulsar nuevas formas de recuperación económica que se centren en la economía circular y los emprendimientos sostenibles y con ello otorguen una mejor calidad de vida para esta generación y las futuras.*

*Artículo extracto de Cuaderno de Investigación del Centro de Estudios en Diseño y Comunicación de la Facultad de Diseño y Comunicación de la Universidad de Palermo y la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad de Salamanca “Propiedad intelectual, diseño y sostenibilidad”, marzo 2021 https://fido.palermo.edu/servicios_dyc/publicacionesdc/cuadernos/index.php

Autora

Analia Pastran

Analia Pastran

Fundadora y Directora Ejecutiva de Smartly

Prof. Analia Pastran, Fundadora y Directora Ejecutiva de Smartly, Emprendedorismo Social en ODS, Nueva York y Buenos Aires (www.insmartly.com). Co-Presidente en el Grupo Constituyente de Socios (PCG) de la Campaña Urbana Mundial de ONU Hábitat. 

 

One-Year Remembrance

One-Year Remembrance

One-Year Remembrance

Saturday March 13, 2021, by Ayman El Tarabishy, President & CEO, ICSB

Dear ICSB Family, 

Anniversaries are a moment for self-reflection, for remembrance, and occasionally, a moment for change. Today as we pass the one-year mark of COVID-19 lockdown in the United States and the corresponding global fallout, we believe that this specific moment creates space for us to reflect, to remember, and to change. 

At ICSB, we believe strongly in creating a more humane and sustainable world. This past year has shown just how enormous and difficult this task can be. But at the same time, the overwhelming resilience, strength, and love that people have shown as they navigate this enormously traumatic year, has been wondrous and humbling to experience. The spirit of the people is clearly and demonstrably behind these core concepts of human-ness and sustainability, and there seems to be change in the air. So, where do we go from here?

One year ago, the rapidly changing world forced us to reflect on what we believe in and what services and opportunities we offer. Pre-COVID, ICSB worked with more traditional forms of communication, emphasizing in-person conferences. We quickly realized flexibility and adaptability were the two main paths forwards, after we ensured the well-being of our employees and community. Over the past year, we’ve completely re-worked our operations by building out journals and other academic resources, and by prioritizing new digital infrastructure, including social media and a re-designed website. We transitioned away from focusing mainly on in-person collaborative conferences to a more decentralized and accessible approach, which created new and unique opportunities for traditionally marginalized actors to participate and grow within spaces that have traditionally been closed off to them. We look forward to continuing to grow and innovate as we meet and adapt to the challenges ahead.

There would be no opportunity for growth or innovation without you, our family, engaging with and challenging the material and resources we provide. This entire process is a collaborative effort, and we sincerely appreciate the support you have shown us as we iron the details out and begin to solidify a long-term approach towards business education and collaboration. In that spirit, this summer will mark the 2021 ICSB World Congress, where we will focus on and emphasize Humane Entrepreneurship as a foundational part of our future in the business ecosystem. This will mark the first major conference since the beginning of the pandemic and we look forward to incorporating the lessons we have learned throughout this past year, as we begin a new chapter in the fight for a more humane and sustainable world. We look forward to collaborating with you, both this summer and beyond. 

In solidarity, 
Dr. Ayman El Tarabishy
ICSB President & CEO

Author

Ayman El Tarabishy

Ayman El Tarabishy

President & CEO, ICSB

The Human Entrepreneurship Vector of Sustainable Development

The Human Entrepreneurship Vector of Sustainable Development

The Human Entrepreneurship Vector of Sustainable Development

Thursday, March 4, 2021, by Prof. Ms. Caio Flavio Stettiner – Centro Paula Souza – São Paulo, SP – Brasil

The development of civilization through the occupation of planet Earth and its renewable and nonrenewable resources, since its most remote times, has neglected the environmental irreversibility arising from its actions, a situation evidenced by ecological degradation, environmental pollution and accelerated climate change.

Contemporary Society, having the Economy as its ecological value, is unaware of the concepts of Entropy and Irreversibility, considering that “Time is Money” (Tiezzi, 1988, p. 32). 

Tiezzi (2008, p. 32) stresses that “progress is measured by the speed with which it is produced” this statement ratifies his understanding that progress advances as speed transform Nature.

The author qualifies the time factor concerning sustainability in two ways: biological time and  historical time. Biological time refers to natural evolution that occurs on our planet billions of years slowly; Historical Time deals with human history in thousands of years. It is only a small interval of the first.

This historical time since the Industrial Revolution  interfered in the increasing manner  over the environment, and in a process   accelerated by technological development, impacting  the Biological Time as the level of Entropy increased, making difficult the renewal of natural resources and diminishing the quality of life of living beings on the planet. According to the author, Historical Time is much more accelerated than Biological Time, which causes several environmental problems:

 “The limits of resources, the limits of resistance of our planet and its atmosphere indicate that the more we accelerate the flow of energy and matter through the Earth system, the more we shorten the real-time at the disposal of our species. An organism that consumes its means of subsistence faster than the environment produces them with no chance of survival” (TIEZZI, 1988, p.32).

This circumstance realizes the importance of the role of time in the issue of sustainability, where the rates of use and regeneration of natural resources should equalize, as well as the rates of pollution emission should adapt to the capacity of the environment to absorb waste. Thus, the history of the Planet is the result of slow changes for millions of years, in contrast to the History of Humanity from the twentieth century through consumption and technological development has been interfering in an intense and predatory way on life on the planet (Giannetti et al., 2020)

Faced with this context of accelerated destruction and search for sustainable development, researchers propose two concepts of production. The first deals with the Circular Economy, whose idea is to transform the linear model of production, consumption, and subsequent disposal of goods into a circular model inspired by Nature, where discarding returns to the production cycle. The second concept is called the Regenerative Economy, which is a model that proposes to regenerate capital goods through the processes of self-feeding, self-renewal, and adaptive learning whose natural systems apply to feed their capacity to progress in long terms (Giannetti et al., 2020).

Both the above concepts corroborate with the Tiezzi (1984) way of thinking, where any socio-economic analysis demands scientific knowledge about Biological Balances and their importance related to limited natural resources and renewal.

Respecting the historical dynamics of the environment, with the necessary modifications, referring to the due adaptations, our Society ought to build up and promote the Concept of Species since both Marxist and Liberal thought does not consider the category of biological time analysis. 

This need comes from a Society divided into the National States divided into Languages, Values, Beliefs, Habits, Production Modes, and Social Organizations that compete with each other without considering that its totality is one specie: Homo Sapiens.

Faced with this adversity, the argument of Parente et al. (2018) and Kim et al. (2018) in proposing the Human Entrepreneurship Model (EmpHum) seeks to prioritize social and environmental aspects together with the generation of jobs with a higher quality of life. This entrepreneurial vision creates a type of Enterprize with leadership that considers the responsible management of resources and the promotion of ecologically responsible and socially more humanized development fits with Tiezzi (1984) argument providing a sustainable practical concept to provide social economic development and sustainability.

For all these reasons, the promotion of a new entrepreneurial mentality based on EmpHum emerges as an interesting theoretical and practical tool for humanity to ensure the sustainability of its species by respecting the understanding Mothe Earth Biological Time.

 

References:

Giannetti, B. F. Almeida, C. M., Agostinho, F. Sulis, F. Coscieme, L., Pulselli, F. M., … & Marchettini, N. (2020). Enzo Tiezzi, turning pioneering into modern ideas: tempos, Ecodynamics, and sustainable economy. Ecological Modelling, 431.

Kim, K. C. ElTarabishy, A., & Bae, Z. T. (2018). Humane entrepreneurship: How focusing on people can drive a new era of wealth and quality job creation in a sustainable world. Journal of Small Business Management, 56(sup1), 10–29.

Parente, R., ElTarabishy, A., Vesci, M., & Botti, A. (2018). The epistemology of humane entrepreneurship: Theory and proposal for future research agenda. Journal of Small Business Management, 56(sup1), 30–52.

Tiezzi, E. (1988). Tempos históricos, tempos biológicos. NBL Editora.

Author

Caio Flavio Stettiner

Caio Flavio Stettiner

Master Teacher

Bachelor of Business Administration , specialist in Higher Education Teaching and Commercial Operations Logistics and also Master in Education , 33 years of experience as an entrepreneur and collaborator of large companies. And for the last 15 years working with consulting and training in Entrepreneurship and Logistics. Researcher in Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Education and Logistics, currently Course Manager and Master Professor of the Management Course of Business and Innovation at Fatec Sebrae Business (www.fatecsebrae.edu.br).

De la Motivación Emprendedora a la Resiliencia

De la Motivación Emprendedora a la Resiliencia

De la Motivación Emprendedora a la Resiliencia

Monday, March 1, 2021, by Dra. Inés Gabarret

En esta columna vamos a hablar de un concepto muy conocido que merece que se lo vuelva a estudiar desde una nueva perspectiva. Se trata de la motivación, y especialmente el de la motivación emprendedora.

Podemos empezar por definir la motivación como una energía que lleva a la acción. Se ha estudiado mucho en el contexto de la gestión de recursos humanos, muy relacionada con el concepto de satisfacción en el trabajo. Existe una cierta identificación entre los conceptos de motivación y satisfacción laboral. La motivación también se ha definido como extrínseca, si responde a un estímulo externo, o intrínseca, en el caso de una búsqueda de interés personal.

El estudio de la motivación empresarial sigue un enfoque principalmente económico. Los economistas se preguntan por qué una persona va a iniciar un negocio en lugar de buscar un trabajo. Y la respuesta dada a esta pregunta es principalmente de orden económico: sea la falta de empleo (necesidad), sea la posibilidad de incrementar sus ganancias (oportunidad).

A lo largo del tiempo, este enfoque se ha ido completando con otros factores no económicos como la insatisfacción (en el caso del emprendedor por necesidad) o el deseo de independencia (para el emprendedor por oportunidad).

El enfoque necesidad / oportunidad es ampliamente utilizado en los estudios académicos sobre la motivación empresarial, y también en la aplicación de políticas públicas. De este modo, se espera que las empresas creadas por necesidad no generen empleo y tengan menor crecimiento, mientras que aquellas creadas por oportunidad tendrían mejores resultados.

Si bien este enfoque motivacional necesidad / oportunidad ha funcionado durante mucho tiempo, hoy en día, la pluralidad de perfiles emprendedores nos obliga a cuestionarnos nuevamente sobre los factores motivacionales. Los resultados de varios estudios llevados a cabo sobre los nuevos perfiles de emprendedores (jóvenes, mujeres, emprendedores sociales, etc.) permiten comprender la motivación como una construcción compleja y en constante evolución.

La motivación emprendedora se forma mediante combinaciones de factores internos y externos, económicos y no económicos, que serán específicos a cada individuo. La motivación no es estática. Si bien se la puede estudiar en un momento dado, resulta más lógico considerarla como un proceso.

Siendo que la motivación se considera, por definición, como una energía que conduce a la acción, ella debe estar presente constantemente para que el emprendedor pueda llevar a cabo su proyecto empresarial. Ella cambia y se transforma con el tiempo y con los encuentros permitiendo al emprendedor conectar su pensamiento y sus emociones con sus acciones, de manera iterativa y constante. El proceso motivacional parece así renovarse después de cada problema o falla, y de esta manera, estaría ligado al proceso de resiliencia.

La resiliencia es la capacidad de recuperarse frente a la adversidad. La resiliencia se ha estudiado principalmente en el caso de emprendedores en serie que crean un nuevo negocio tras el fracaso del anterior. Se estudia solo al final del proceso, mientras que la motivación se estudia solo al principio. Sin embargo, el emprendedor se encontrará con problemas a lo largo de toda la vida de la empresa. Los imprevistos y los peligros encontrados afectarán sus estados emocionales, lo que puede debilitar su motivación. La pérdida de motivación puede ser una causa de fracaso empresarial. La relación entre motivación, resiliencia y satisfacción es un aspecto importante del éxito no sólo de la creación de empresa, sino también del proceso de desarrollo y crecimiento de ésta.

Autora

Dra. Inés Gabarret

Dra. Inés Gabarret

Profesora de emprendimiento en la escuela de comercio ESSCA Paris

Investigadora en temas de emprendimiento, especializada en el estudio de los conceptos de motivación emprendedora y resiliencia, experta en incubación de empresas y emprendimiento femenino. Profesora de emprendimiento en la escuela de comercio ESSCA Paris, donde también ejerce como Decana. Investigadora asociada a la Universidad de Versalles, Francia. Consultora en temas de incubación y emprendimiento femenino.