This book explains what every executive should know to manage the environmental challenges facing society and the business world. Based on the authors’ rich experience with forward-thinking companies around the world, Green to Gold demonstrates how corporations create value by building environmental thinking into their overall business strategies. Daniel C. Esty and Andrew S.
The Labyrinth of Sustainability’ explores the growth of corporate sustainability in Latin America, offering actionable insights to business leaders, policymakers, NGOs, academics and journalists through 12 case studies that examine the challenges and opportunities facing companies across the region as they integrate sustainability into their strategy and operations.
A practical, bipartisan call to action from the world’s leading thinkers on the environment and sustainability
Sustainable investing is a rapidly growing and evolving field. With investors expressing ever greater interest in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics and reporting, companies face a sustainability imperative and the need to remake their business models to respond to an array of pressing issues including climate change, air and water pollution, racial justice, workplace diversity, economic inequality, privacy, corporate integrity, and good governance.
In an interview with The Economist, Center Director Dan Esty, highlights how policy “red lights” must be trasformed to “green lights” that drive innovation with incentives that engage the world’s entrepreneurs, financial markets and creative spirits in the pursuit of a net-zero future. This philosphy is expanded upon and highlighted in the recently released book “A Better Planet: 40 Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future”.
Read the interview here.
Buy A Better Planet: 40 Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future here.
In their proposed rule on climate-related risk disclosure, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) referenced the Yale Initiative on Sustainable Finance (YISF) 2020 White Paper Toward Enhanced Sustainability Disclosure: Identifying Obstacles to Broader and More Actionable ESG Reporting, which was written with support from the Climate Works Foundation.
Based on a survey of executives from more than 100 public companies, the YISF White Paper deepens the understanding of corporate ESG reporting practices, challenges, and thinking about how best to track and scorecard corporate sustainability performance. By highlighting the shortcomings that plague the existing patchwork of sustainability metrics, and suggesting a pathway toward a more robust framework for gauging corporate sustainability performance, this White Paper seeks to make it easier for investors to identify corporate sustainability leaders and laggards. Considering the need for more clarity and guidance around ESG disclosure and formats, the YISF White Paper calls for the creation of a standardized ESG reporting framework with mandatory disclosure by all public companies. Assurance requirements and an initiative to harmonize disclosure requirements at international level are also proposed to help ensure the quality of data reported and a commitment to continuous improvement in the information available to investors.
By establishing a mandatory reporting framework for climate-related risks, the SEC rule realizes a longstanding demand of YISF. It concurs with our findings that the proliferation of reporting framework has made ESG reporting more difficult, not simpler. This new proposed rule by the SEC would bring more consistency, as well as transparency, to the corporate sustainability world. However, by focusing on the disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related financial risks, the SEC’s proposed rule would only mandate transparency against a narrow set of ESG issues, despite investors’ wider demands. The YISF aims to comment on the proposed rule by May 20, 2022.
Read the SEC proposed rule here.
Check out the YISF White Paper here (an updated version of the YISF White Paper is forthcoming in the Virginia Law & Business Review).
U.S. financial regulators lag behind other countries in requiring corporations to disclose their financial risks from climate change. Hana Vizcarra, staff attorney at Harvard Law School’s Environmental & Energy Law Program, joins Charles Harper (YSE ’22) to discuss the financial sector, climate risk disclosure, and how courts and President Biden’s SEC can improve climate reporting.
Aisha Saad, a Fellow of the Program on Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School, joins Jhena Vigrass (YSE ’22) to discuss the current challenges of corporate sustainability reporting and investing in ESG funds. Aisha contributed to the recently released book, Values at Work: Sustainable Investing and ESG Reporting, which explores how companies and investors can respond to pressing environmental and social issues.
Center Director Dan Esty appeared as the introductory keynote speaker to the “Measurement Tools for a Regeneration Path” panel discussion, hosted by the alliance Regeneration 20|30. Esty spoke about the importance of business performance measurement tools in the sustainability sector, and the improvements required to better measure the long-term environmental impacts of committed companies.
In an op-ed with Market Watch, Center Director Dan Esty shared that to fight climate change, the U.S. must change the way it thinks about protecting the environment. We need more positive incentives to inspire fresh thinking, spur technology development and channel capital.
Find the article here.
