This is the second blog on our Symposium on Corporate Responsibility and Responsible Investment: Past, Present, and Future, held at Columbia University on May 7th and 8th. The Symposium brought together over 40 leaders from the Corporate Responsibility (CR) and Responsible Investment (RI) fields — including many of the pioneers and leading thinkers who helped shape these movements over the past five decades.
On May 7th and 8th, High Meadows Institute and Columbia University’s Sustainable Investing Research Initiative (SIRI), in partnership with the Corporate Responsibility Initiative (CRI) at the Harvard Kennedy School, brought together over 40 leaders from the Corporate Responsibility (CR) and Responsible Investment (RI) fields — including many of the pioneers and leading thinkers who helped shape these movements over the past five decades — for a Symposium on Corporate Responsibility and Responsible Investment at Columbia to assess where the fields stand today and what must change looking forward.
Donella Meadows, in Thinking in Systems, described how meaningful systems change occurs when interventions move from adjusting parameters to reshaping goals, incentives, and governing paradigms. The evolution of corporate responsibility (CR) and responsible investment (RI) over the past five decades can be understood through this same lens.
Over the past three decades, the corporate responsibility (CR) and responsible investment (RI) movements were developed in an operating environment built on a set of implicit assumptions:
Corporate responsibility and responsible investment transformed the language and institutions of modern capitalism. Why hasn’t that translated into change at the scale that matters? For more than half a century, the corporate responsibility (CR) and responsible investment (RI) movements have sought to reshape the role of business and finance in society.
Over the past five decades, the corporate responsibility (CR) and responsible investment (RI)* movements have begun to fundamentally reshape how businesses and capital markets think about their role in society. What began as a normative push for corporations and investors to consider their environmental and social impacts has grown into a complex global ecosystem of investors, companies, civil society actors, standards bodies, and regulators.
As climate change accelerates, the need for greater financial sector investment and support for climate resilience and adaptation (A&R) is becoming increasingly urgent. While climate finance has traditionally focused on mitigation, primarily through reducing greenhouse gas emissions, recent developments underscore the critical importance of adaptation in securing social, economic, and environmental stability. Why Climate Resilience and Adaptation Matter Climate adaptation investments aim to reduce the economic and social impacts of climate change, including more frequent extreme weather events, population displacement, and infrastructure damage. According to the World Meteorological Organization, extreme weather events have increased fivefold since the 1970s, underscoring the…
If we are to make serious progress on the journey to address systemic challenges such as climate change and manage the transition to a sustainable low-carbon economy, the active support of the global banking industry is essential. Called systemically important financial institutions for a reason, global banks now manage an estimated $370 trillion in worldwide assets, which are expected to grow to between $500 trillion and $550 trillion in the next decade. It is not surprising in this context that there is now an expectation for global banks to play a greater role in addressing a wide range of social,…
The potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to profoundly disrupt our economy and society, from AI bots that can replace jobs on the factory floor, to drafting lawsuits, writing screenplays and composing music, is becoming increasingly clear. As a recent Goldman Sachs report noted, while AI could add to labor productivity growth and boost global GDP by as much as 7% over time, it will also severely disrupt labor markets, posing new challenges. According to the report, two-thirds of jobs in the US and Europe could be automated and around the world, as many as 300 million jobs could be impacted….
While there is currently a lot of attention focused on the financial capital required to transition to a net zero, low-carbon economy, there has been far less focus on the human capital skills and development needed and this may in fact be the most important challenge facing us when it comes to achieving net zero. Key human capital deficiencies that we currently face include: Addressing the skills gap – The numbers are challenging. In the energy sector alone, the International Energy Agency projected in its seminal report, Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector, that the…
