The development of corporate integrated reporting (IR) standards has the promise to be one of the great business innovations of the 21st century, and could be pivotal in restoring public trust in business institutions, Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria told a seminal gathering of IR key stakeholders at an HBS workshop last week.

Corporate leaders are challenged to step up to greater commitments on sustainability, and to ensure they have performance measures for behaviour directly linked to responsibility and trust if they are to succeed. With sustainability driving trust and innovation, companies are making it core to their strategies and activities, so having stand-alone CSR (corporate social responsibility) departments looks like a fast-declining trend. This is according to global reputation auditors Echo Research, in their latest report, "A World in Trust - Leadership and Corporate Responsibility" with the International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF).

Can Copenhagen deliver a new industrial revolution?  – David Vigar, Climate Change Adviser, Tomorrow’s Company, david@davidvigar.co.uk As December’s Copenhagen climate summit approaches, new evidence is emerging of the massive scale of the action needed to avert the risk of runaway global warming. At the same time, contradictory signals emerging from the pre-summit discussions don’t inspire confidence that it’s likely to be taken.  The scale of the task is underlined in a new report, Climate Solutions 2, produced for WWF by Climate Risk, a company that advises insurers and others on climate-related issues. Their modelling takes into account targets for stabilising greenhouse gases, available low-carbon technologies and the speed at which industries can grow in a market economy, given physical and financial constraints. The report’s bottom line is that world’s governments, businesses and investors have five years to shift low-carbon industries into a high growth phase to avoid...

GLOBE-Net (October 16, 2009) What is the role of investors in creating a more sustainable economy? A survey of fund managers just published by the UK’s Fair Pensions campaign provides challenging reading for anyone who believes that a green future will emerge simply through market forces operating in the investment community. The market purist argument is that the system should regulate itself; because if climate change really is a material risk for businesses, it should be built into the way companies are valued. Companies whose factories or plantations could be destroyed by climate change-induced floods or droughts should be less attractive investments than ones making wind turbines or hybrid car engines. 

The London G-20 Summit, April 2nd, marked a useful new beginning for multi-lateralism.  The eclipsing of the G-8 was as necessary for the world as the new informal proposals by China, India, Russia and Brazil for a new global reserve currency to complement the US dollar and the euro.