"The race for faster and higher growth has unfortunately left a devastating trail of widespread poverty and environmental degradation. Instead of securing the future, the growth model pursued has created a fragile and vulnerable global society. A sustainable and stable future demands that societal value creation is an integral part of economic policies and strategies. To my mind, the primary purpose of economic development is to enhance societal value. All economic activity therefore needs to be aligned to this super-ordinate goal."
Y. C. Deveshwar,
Chairman,
ITC Limited & Advisory Council, CII-ITC Centre |
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The CII-ITC Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Development also successfully organised the Business Leaders Programme with Prof. Stuart Hart as the faculty. The objective of the programme was to train key decision makers in large organisations on sustainability strategies. Another major global investor driven initiative of the Centre has been the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP).
 This project aims to collect critical climate change data from the world’s largest companies to appraise the global marketplace on investment related risks and commercial opportunities. In 2010, the CDP observed a very high percentage of Indian respondent companies taking action to reduce GHG emissions, a trend comparable to the best in the world, with 85% of responding companies disclosing their GHG emissions. In keeping with the above mentioned trends and with an intention to further encourage and reward high quality responses, CDP India introduced the Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index (CDLI) in India, which aims to rank companies in terms of the quality and completeness of their disclosure.
The Centre also introduced two new publications, ‘Excellence in Sustainable Business - Strategies & Practices for Business Growth & Competitiveness’ - a knowledge resource on best practices drawn from the assessment findings of award-winning companies over the last four years and ‘Sustainable and Inclusive Innovation - Strategies for Tomorrow’s World’- a report which offers valuable insights into how innovations in products, services and processes are driving the creation of new businesses and industry structures.
In an effort to identify and recognise Indian businesses for their exemplary sustainability performance, the Centre annually presents the CII-ITC Sustainability Awards. A new category of applications for micro-business organisations was introduced this year. 68 companies competed for the Awards, now in its sixth year. |
