Devex Invested: The world's largest corporate sustainability initiative

The United Nations Global Compact is the world’s largest voluntary corporate sustainability initiative. So what happens when it convenes global business leaders for a 26-hour virtual marathon event? We tuned in — well, at least for parts of it — to find out:

• Executive Director Sanda Ojiambo walked me through the organization’s focus on five imperatives in its new strategic plan: accountability, balanced growth, prioritization of Sustainable Development Goals and the 10 Global Compact principles, a tailored strategy for small and medium-sized enterprises, and strengthening its relationship with the U.N. system.

• The Global Compact has long been criticized as weak due to its voluntary nature, so I asked Ojiambo how it might hold member companies to account. The initiative is updating and digitalizing its reporting framework so companies can see how they stack up against others. “Good businesses are transparent,” she says.

• Another debate last week: Will business step up to combat corruption? No verdict yet, but there is a new “playbook” for how companies can work together to scale anti-corruption efforts.

• COVID-19 has highlighted the vulnerability of low-wage workers, and despite calls for more corporations to pay a living wage, vast income disparities exist. A new report has found that there is “a rapid evolution in both commitment and action by business” to pay workers a living wage. Those efforts face two key challenges: the lack of a definition around what a living wage is, and the complexity of ensuring a living wage throughout supply chains.

Devex Pro: Read our interview with Ojiambo for more about the new strategy and the latest sustainability trends.

The free read: Dive into Lisa Cornish’s analysis, which finds that one unexpected key is a common language for talking about sustainable finance.

Mind the gap

70% of CEOs report that COVID-19 has increased the importance of corporate responsibility.

This figure comes from a recent survey by Accenture and the UN Global Compact. But compared with those from the global north, about twice as many CEOs from the global south say the pandemic has negatively impacted sustainability efforts.

US makes first moves on ESG reporting

The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation last week that, if made into law, would require companies of a certain size to disclose environmental, social, and governance metrics.

It would also compel the government to create a Sustainable Finance Advisory Committee to determine which metrics should be reported. The ESG Disclosure Simplification Act of 2021 passed as part of a broader bill by the narrowest of margins, so its fate in the Senate is unclear.

Refugee returns

The Refugee Investment Network is developing a “Refugee Lens” that would be similar to a model that has helped gender lens investing. The International Finance Corp. and the U.S. International Development Finance Corp. are among the groups interested in this approach, which the network is researching in seven Latin American countries.

We chatted with Tim Docking, managing director at RIN, to learn more.

What is the connection between the way a host country treats refugees and the benefits of investment?

It is too early to back that with data, but there are countries we are working in, like Jordan and Uganda — both of them have had refugee populations for generations. What are we finding in those countries that treat their refugees well? It is hard to generalize. One of the things we are talking a lot about … is how to really highlight our emphasis on host communities.

But the idea overall is that you will get more data on the connection between good refugee policy and growth — and that will help further the work.

That’s right. There are data; we can demonstrate there is demand in the capital markets for social investing. The faith-based community is one example. It is very early. But as the work takes shape and we put the pillars of our theory of change in place, it is helpful for people who want to do more than environmental investing.

Investments of interest

• The Rockefeller Foundation and the IKEA Foundation are betting big on renewable energy. Each is investing $500 million — the largest single investment for either foundation — in a fund that they hope will finance more than $10 billion in small-scale renewable energy projects.

• The Private Infrastructure Development Group and Globeleq, an independent power producer for Africa that is majority-owned by the U.K. CDC Group, have broken ground on a solar power and energy storage project in northern Mozambique. The $32 million project will be “one of the first IPP [independent power producer] grid-scale storage plants in sub-Saharan Africa.”