2Sustain

Here’s some welcome news: A new coalition promises to develop an independent, non-commercial framework for rating sustainability performance. If successful, this new Global Initiative for Sustainability Ratings (GISR) could

• eliminate market confusion,

• reduce conflicts of interest between rating agencies and the companies they survey and

• increase market and consumer confidence in how companies are rated in their environmental and social performance.

Launched last month, GISR is a joint initiative between Ceres, a national coalition of investors and public interest organizations, and Tellus Institute, one of the world’s leading sustainability research and policy organizations.

A more uniform framework is important because sustainability ratings have the ability to push capital and consumer markets towards companies that have embedded sustainability within their operations and supply chains. But, the proliferation of sustainability ratings over the past decade means that in some cases, companies can manipulate the results from various ratings systems and promote only the scores that put their company in a favorable light. Of course, those same companies also can “cherry pick” among results, avoiding the mention of other surveys that are less flattering.

Confusing matters further, some ratings offer little or no transparency about the methodologies used to determine their ratings, which blurs the line between the raters and the companies they rate.

Will this new, additional sustainability standard muddy the waters even more? (more…)

Consumers are increasingly focused on corporations’ sustainability practices. But, how well do public perceptions align with firms’ actual performance on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues?

New research suggests that there isn’t much alignment, at all, and that, unfortunately, many companies are facing reputational risk if they don’t better coordinate their branding, communications, reporting and stakeholder engagement processes around emerging ESG priorities.

The new study, Sustainability Research Report: Measuring Perception vs. Reality, provides a quantitative analysis of sustainability and corporate citizenship performance of 100 leading multinationals.

Conducted by the brand consulting firm Brandlogic and CRD Analytics, the study surveyed 2400 supply chain managers, investment professionals and graduating college students from the US and abroad about their perceptions of the multinationals’ ESG efforts. Then, researchers compared those perceptions against the performance data from 175 performance metrics and five key ESG performance indicators.

Data from the study showed that: (more…)

The third annual Corporate Responsibility Review from the German sustainable investment rating agency oekom research is out, and the results are somewhat disappointing.

After analyzing the CSR performance of approximately 3,100 companies from throughout the world, oekom research found that only one in six companies currently satisfies the environmental and social requirements necessary to receive “Prime Status” in the ratings. In addition, the research revealed that numerous companies from industrialized nations continue to be involved in violations of human rights and labor rights or environmental scandals.

More specifically: (more…)

Working within the framework of the World Ports Climate Initiative, six European ports have collaborated to launch an initiative to reward ships that cut emissions.

Beginning in January, the ports of Hamburg, Bremen, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Le Havre will offer financial incentives to ships that perform better than the emissions standard adopted by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) back in 2008. The cornerstone of this new initiative is the Environmental Ship Index (ESI), which essentially calculates a ship’s green performance. (more…)

Yesterday, the NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:NDAQ) and the CRD Analytics announced the launch of the NASDAQ OMX CRD Global Sustainability 50 Index (Nasdaq:QCRD). This new index allows investors and other stakeholders to track the performance of
organizations that are emerging as leaders in sustainability
performance reporting because it includes companies that have voluntarily disclosed fundamental indicators, such as their carbon footprint, energy usage, water consumption, hazardous and non-hazardous waste, employee safety, workforce diversity, management composition and community investing.

(more…)