It is the wild west of sustainability consulting right now – awareness is high, but comprehension is low. There are sustainability practitioners (knowledgeable and qualified), subject-matter experts (knowledgeable in one or two areas that fall under the sustainability umbrella) and gunslingers (armed with the lingo but not the knowledge). The article provides clarity and guidance to companies trying to assess which of these characters to engage.

The Climate Bonds Initiative announced in Brussels last week the countdown to the worlds first Climate Bond issuance - worth a quarter of a billion US dollars - with the release of a draft Compliance Standard that will assure the environmental integrity of bonds issued to fund low carbon projects. The first version of the Standard will apply to wind energy.

Those of us who are involved in this new profession called risk management are in a lot of trouble.

Sitting in the United Nations Global Compact 2010 Leaders’ Summit, I am reminded of something I heard someone say at a conference many years ago. They were speaking of the movement for racial equality in the 1950s and 60s: “Those leading change often overestimate what they can achieve in the short term and underestimate what they will achieve in the long term.”

As regular readers of my blog know, I'm fascinated by the role that culture and behaviours play in so many of the critical aspects of business activity which have been in the spotlight since the credit crunch. Whether it’s stewardship, governance, risk, selling (or mis-selling), reporting etc - when things go spectacularly wrong and jeopardise the existence of an organisation, it’s typically the result of unacceptable behaviour.