Sustainability
Tenured Harvard Business School professor, now at Oxford University.
Let’s make this a multiple choice question.
- The country has English at its official language.
- The country has won at least one Gold Medal in the Summer Olympics.
- The country has placed a man on the moon.
- The country has at least one university ranked in the top 10 Global Rankings by U.S. News & World Report.
- The country has not published a Voluntary National Review.
If you picked (5) you got it right! Even if you don’t have any idea what a Voluntary National Review (VNR) is. So let me explain. In 2015 the United Nations adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) “as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity.” These goals are interlinked with each other and “recognize that action in one area will affect outcomes in others, and that development must balance social, economic and environmental sustainability.” Furthermore, “The creativity, knowhow, technology, and financial resources from all of society is necessary to achieve the SDGs in every context.” The U.S. supported the adoption of the SDGs and “played a central role in shaping these benchmarks, joining all the world’s countries in adopting them in 2015.”
Robert G. Eccles of Saïd Business School, University of Oxford is the author of a number of books on integrated reporting, sustainability and the role of business in society. His focus is on sustainability from both a company and investor perspective. Professor Eccles is also involved in a variety of initiatives to embed environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues in real world decision making. One of these is the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), of which he was the founding chairman. In 2018, Professor Eccles was selected by Barron’s as one of the top 20 influencers on ESG investing.
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