BLUEPRINT FOR CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY LEADERSHIP

Fondation Guilé collaborated with the UN Global Compact in designing the “Blueprint for Corporate Sustainability Leadership”.

Blueprint for Corporate Sustainability Leadership

The project was initiated at a private event which took place during the World Economic Forum
(WEF) Annual Meeting on 29 January 2010. The event was hosted by Fondation Guilé in cooperation with the Swiss Government (represented by SDC), KPMG and Novo Nordisk.

The proposal for a “Blueprint for Corporate Sustainability Leadership in the Context of the
UN Global Compact” was presented by Thomas Streiff, Head of the Guilé Engagement Team. Important inputs for the design and development of the Blueprint were collected through discussions with high-level representatives from the private and public sector as well as the UN.

These findings informed Fondation Guilé’s work on the Blueprint and defined leadership within the Global Compact in three distinct dimensions:

• integrating the 10 principles into strategies and operations
• taking action in support of broader UN goals and issues
• engaging with the UN Global Compact.

In the following, the rationale, structure and in particular the key components of the identified leadership dimensions were discussed and further developed together with the core team of the Global Compact Office. The Blueprint was launched at the UN Global Compact Leaders’ Summit 2010 in New York. Endorsement of the Blueprint has become since then one of the membership criteria for the new UN Global Compact platform: Global Compact LEAD .

UN PRI SUSTAINABLE STOCK EXCHANGES INITIATIVE

Fondation Guilé is also a signatory and promoter of the UN PRI and is involved in the Sustainable Stock Exchanges initiative (SSE). This initiative aims to explore how exchanges can work together with investors, regulators, and companies to enhance corporate transparency, and ultimately performance, on ESG issues and encourage responsible long-term approaches to investment.

→ SSE Global Dialogue
(October 2014, United Nations Office, Geneva, Switzerland)

The initiative was co-convened by the Principles for Responsible Investment, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative, and the UN Global Compact.

In support of the wider Sustainable Stock Exchange initiative, a group of PRI signatories sent letters to the top 30 stock exchanges, beginning in 2011, asking that they address inadequate sustainability reporting by companies. Fondation Guilé was one of the four service provider signatories of this letter.

Specifically, signatories were asked to support a call to global stock market listing authorities to consider possible actions that exchanges can take, including, but not limited to, the following suggestions:

• encourage better internal corporate governance
• consult with companies on how they should be integrating sustainability into long-term strategic decision-making
• provide guidance for companies on material sustainability issues, global initiatives, and other opportunities that encourage ESG disclosure
• consider mandating that listed companies have a nonbinding shareholder vote on the sustainability report or sustainability strategy.