That the integration of the sustainability is one of the drivers key to the development of the company, its business model and its market positioning. no one who is doing a minimum analysis of the context in which companies operate today doubts it. And it is well conducted, Sustainability minimizes business risks and generates a positive impact on the environment.
However, it is also true that many companies are still asking themselves the following questions what is sustainability?what their integration consists of. And, in short, why it is so important. These are all legitimate questions and may have answers with relevant nuances, but they should all have a common goal: to ensure the company's medium- and long-term sustainability. With this objective in mind, we have defined our support proposals in the following areas Felidarity.
From CSR to ESG and... to the greenwashing
Incidentally, it is also striking to see how this issue has changed its name over time. From corporate social responsibility to sustainability and, nowadays, to what is known as ESG (environmental, social and governance) aspects. And it seems that this is what ESG is all about, ESG in its English terminology, does not have long to live, especially in view of some of the criticisms coming from the financial sector. Because it must be taken into account that the vision of sustainability from ESG criteria respond to a financial approach to sustainabilityThe company's strategy, focused on the return that incorporates environmental, social and governance criteria to ensure the best return on investment.
In short, this "financialized" approach to sustainability hides a risk management approach to this issue. Everyone knows that the approach of investors when making their decisions is marked by a minimization of the risks that may jeopardize the return on their investment. With this perspective, it seems easy to understand that integrating good environmental, social and governance (ESG) risk management improves the likelihood of return on investment. However, investors' desire to minimize the ESG risks of their investments has led the funds that manage those investments to propose sustainable investment proposals that, on too many occasions, had little to do with sustainability. This is one of the strongest current criticisms of the ESG view of sustainability: the call effect of sustainable investment has flooded the market with what is now known as greenwashing.
Sustainability understood from the point of view of impact -in management and in the company's social and environmental surroundings.
For these and other reasons, us in Felidarity We prefer to explain sustainability as the integration of an adequate management of the company's impacts. This vision stems from the company's ethical commitment to generate a positive impact on its different stakeholders,
This impact-based view of sustainability does not negate an adequate management of the company's ethical and sustainable risks, but rather, in our opinion, surpasses it. It not only analyzes and manages the company's key ethical and sustainable risks, but also analyzes and decides on the impacts it generates and wants to generate. In short, this impact approach is proactive, while the risk approach is only reactive.
It is proactive because it incorporates a process of autonomous decision making by the company to identify the impacts to be generated.
In short, this impact-based view of sustainability defines the company's contribution of value to society, a contribution of value that is not only marked by the economic return, but that clearly, emphatically and transparently incorporates the contribution of social and environmental value and an ethical management model.
From this perspective of integration and impact management, the company is improving its value proposition and, therefore, is significantly improving its likelihood of lasting in the medium and long term.
As we said at the beginning, this should be the objective of any vision of sustainability and, in a way, it could be the filter that we should put on any other nomenclature given to this matter. And anything that helps the project to last is more than welcome.
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