This paper outlines Ceres’ vision and expectations for corporate best practices in the coming years – practices that must come to represent the norm, not the exception. The sustainability journey has already begun for many companies and for those who are just starting out, we offer a realistic and clear roadmap to accelerate their efforts. It is intended to challenge, as well as inform and assist, those who aim to integrate sustainability into their business. It explores the rationale and key considerations involved in making the shift to sustainability, details strategies and tools being used by some companies, and provides suggestions for the next generation of best practice. The paper lays out four broad areas of activity that companies should focus on and achieve by 2020. Those areas include governance, stakeholder engagement, disclosure and performance. While the attention given to each component depends upon the particular business and industry, we believe this roadmap will prove invaluable to all companies.
The first section outlines core governance building blocks – management structures, goal-setting and strategic decision-making processes – that are needed to integrate sustainability. Companies can use proactive stakeholder engagement, highlighted in the next section, to assess the relative importance of specific goals and the effectiveness of strategies. Disclosing critical information to stakeholders, according to the expectations set out in the third section, will help show that a company’s commitment to sustainability is real and its performance credible.
Lastly, the roadmap details key performance areas for measuring how companies are progressing on sustainability. It includes demanding performance expectations in keeping with the scale and urgency of the sustainability challenges before us.
Now, more than ever, companies must begin calibrating their performance goals against national and international performance standards that are grounded in science. In the case of climate change, for example, companies must reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 in order to meet reductions that leading scientists agree are necessary to prevent catastrophic warming.
Just as sound business decisions must be based on science it is also important for companies to respond to societal expectations. It has become clear that it is not acceptable anywhere in the world to produce goods in unsafe or exploitative conditions. These are real business risks for global companies.
In the coming years, the strategies that companies pursue will determine not only their shareholder value, but also the future of our species and our planet. It is at once a daunting challenge and a huge opportunity.