Explore Materials

It was not long ago when business looked at environmental issues and their impact as a compliance exercise. Slowly, at first, leading businesses began to change their concept of environmental management to look beyond simply meeting governmental dictates. These organizations began to evolve and utilize “sustainability strategies” to create new ways to drive value creation by bringing sustainability to the core of their business strategy. This seismic shift was accompanied by a bottomline emphasis that, in some cases, turned sustainability efforts into profit centers. Today, there has been a shift, yet again, to confront what the reality that business must lead our world’s response to climate change and to help avoid disaster.

Businesses must be prepared for climate change’s impacts on their operations and must be fully positioned to drive value creation and innovation in these challenging times. Business cannot simply react to environmental mandates; they must lead and drive change! 2 Sustainable initiatives are increasingly not hidden within the silos of sustainability, EHS (environmental, health, and safety), or CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) departments, but have become much more seamlessly integrated into the operations of enterprise functional disciplines. Today, to effectively work in senior management, an executive needs to be knowledgeable not only about their specific business function, but also on how their business will be impacted by environmental supply chain disruptions, requirements around sustainability reporting, ESG (environmental, social, and governance) demands on a business, ability to market sustainable product attributes, managing energy, water, and food needs globally, and sustainable technology to drive new initiatives