Agenda

An opening panel featuring executives, economists, and leaders in the sustainable and socially responsible investing arenas, discussing the topic's hot-button issues and areas of concern. Special attention will be paid to economic angles of sustainability. The exact topics will be guided by current events, and will also provide context for the day's dialogue.

A debate is raging on whether publicly traded corporations should integrate sustainable reporting into their financial reports - many investors are pushing for this, many corporations are not yet there--what are the ramifications? Without integrated reporting, can a company's sustainability efforts be accurately quantified? Does corporate reluctance to provide integrated reporting mean that current sustainability reports are not as transparent as many investors would like? Are the new standards from organizations like the GRI and the IIRC adequate for large, multinational corporations? From an investor perspective, what makes this integration attractive? From a CSR perspective, is it better to integrate the information, or have it stand on its own? What do CFOs on both sides of the issue think?

As CSR initiatives are often evolving into processes with measurable results, CSR executives are becoming more integrated into their organization's overall financial structure.  Although CSR was traditionally a cost center, now it is can be an operating department which can create and protect value for shareholders.  With this comes increasing responsibility for, and focus on, CSR executives.  How are the various CSR metrics and rankings determined, and what can executives do to influence them? What do investors want to know about CSR initiatives and what, in particular, do they want to learn from metrics? How have some CSR executives helped transform their brands into names that have become synonymous with good corporate citizenship?

Stakeholder Engagement: An Investment Perspective
Stakeholder engagement can be essential to providing continued growth and profitability for any organization.  It can also provide its own share of headaches for corporations, investors and stakeholders alike, as the groups struggle with measurement and communication. What does the investment community want to see from stakeholder engagement efforts? What are examples of companies that investors feel handle stakeholder engagement well?  Which companies have handled stakeholder engagement poorly? What are the various ways that stakeholder engagement can be quantitatively measured?

Communication and Integration for CSR Professionals

The panel will discuss the ways that CSR executives can influence the rest of their organization, shareholders and stakeholders via communication about their initiatives, looking at ways that their initiatives can be integrated into the company's larger mission, and alleviating differences in priorities between CSR and other departments, such as government relations.  How can CSR professionals make a business case for initiatives that may not be immediately profitable?  Leading CSR executives will describe specific examples of successful CSR programs, the difficulties they encountered and their results.

Population growth, climate change, industrial agriculture and pollution are all contributing to the world's rapidly depleting water supply. Investors are pressing corporations to determine their water risk, and demonstrate that they are prepared to address it, as many have a three-fold exposure: as a physical risk to their operations or supply chain, as a CSR risk, and as a function of their specific industry sector being associated with heavy water use. North America is predicted to experience severe water shortages in one third of the counties across the lower 48 states by 2050. Asia, Africa and South America contain nations already facing severe shortage. The private sector is just beginning to prepare for an era of stricter regulation of the world's single most important finite resource. How does a company's water footprint translate to costs and benefits for its investors? What are investors looking for in a company's water risk mitigation strategy?

Incorporating climate change risks and opportunities into capital allocation decisions may sound like something out of a 1980's science fiction novel, but a growing cadre of modern investors are beginning to do just that.  Recognizing the need to hedge or mitigate the portfolio risks caused by climate change is just one of the newer risk sets necessary for institutional investors to identify and assess in order that they continue to provide growth of their assets under management.  The business and investment community has developed a number of strategies and tools to begin to address these issues, but much work and debate remains.  Can investors consider climate change in strategic asset allocation decisions?  Is there sufficient information available to do this confidently? How can companies address their exposure to climate change risks and opportunities and communicate these to shareholders? How have metrics with regard to corporate GHG emissions and other indicators of litigation or reputational risk developed?  Certain industry sectors are more vulnerable to climate change's effects than others - what can companies more susceptibility to climate risk do to assure their shareholders that they are prepared for possible climate change related events?