Brazil is going through a crucial moment, with international demands on fulfilling commitments to reduce emissions and combat illegal deforestation. It is also a chance to accelerate the transition to a new decarbonized economy and position the country for the topic that will dominate business in the coming years. A unique chance to elevate the country to the role of global protagonist in sustainability.
The moment could not be more opportune to start this column, which I will publish in the first week of the month, to address the sustainability bias in the business world. Grupo Estado's decision to open more spaces for this sustainability agenda is worthy of tribute, including this concern also in its economic news.
There's a lot to talk about. This September 5th, we celebrate Amazon Day and, if on the one hand the day registers our concern with the advancement of the devastation of the Amazon and other biomes, on the other we can celebrate a joint awakening to the importance of the cause, no longer restricted to environmentalists and partisan protesters.
We began a new era of business activism in Brazil.
These are companies that realized that adopting sustainable practices improves their business and, therefore, they are the most successful and will become more and more successful. An example is the Corporate Sustainability Index (ISE), created in 2005, and which in 2020 has a portfolio that encompasses 37.62% (R$ 1.64 trillion) of the total value of the Brazilian stock market, according to data from B3. In general, the shares of these companies are ahead of those that have not yet adopted ESG criteria.
The movement was also growing among investors. In 2018, shareholders practically forced the oil giant ExxonMobil to invest in renewable energy to make up its portfolio, and offset emissions for possible carbon pricing in the global market. Last year, we saw emblematic actions, such as the World Bank ceasing to finance fossil fuels. In January 2020, shortly before the world was struck by the Covid-19 pandemic, Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the largest investment fund manager in the world, ruled that ESG criteria guide his assessments of company performance. After him, other funds followed this path, increasingly stifling businesses that are not in line with socio-environmental premises.
The pandemic accelerated processes that we expected to see happen over the next few years. The generalization of home office has demonstrated that an executive no longer needs to spend hours on a plane for a meeting on the other side of the world, for example. In addition to the drop in company costs, productivity optimizations like this provide a reduction in carbon emissions from unnecessary trips, not to mention gains in the health of executives by avoiding the exhaustion of long journeys in a short period of time.
Social isolation and the drastic reduction in economic activity have also brought impressive images of rapid natural regeneration: cleaner seas, skies and rivers. I also notice greater awareness in consumption, acceleration of digitalization and innovative processes.
However, the pandemic also highlighted problems that were visible, but were so trivial that they did not mobilize financial agents. The lack of basic sanitation became even more evident when we saw that a large part of the population could not comply with the basic recommendations of washing their hands, as they did not have a tap at home. The subhouses clearly demonstrated the difficulty of social isolation in needy communities in all regions of the country. And the public health system, so scrapped, proved to be more necessary than ever, and revealed the fundamental importance of the State's role in this management . At the same time, business leaders also started to do more for health, an area that has enormous potential for partnership and joint work with public authorities.
With all these signs, the business sector, which since 2015 has been imbued with the application of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in its operations, was finally able to understand that its role goes beyond laws and obligations. Your extramural role is fundamental, including for the survival of your business, which brings new challenges to business operations. What is the point, for example, of carrying out good operational management without correctly directing waste that accumulates in tributaries in the river basin and could make the use of this natural resource unfeasible in the near future? The management of the social impacts of activities in the environment in which the company operates and with all its stakeholders becomes more comprehensive and is no longer a one-way street: it is systemic. Each link in this chain moves all the gears and it is no longer possible to act in isolation.
The construction of this awareness culminated in a decision by the CEBDS Council of Leaders, made up of CEOs from 60 of the largest companies in the country, in May this year. Forum where we discussed strategies for joint action in favor of sustainability, the Council of Leaders identified the need for a public and unequivocal positioning of businesspeople on the protection of the Amazon and other biomes. In partnership with the Brazilian Agribusiness Association (Abag), the Brazilian Tree Industry (Ibá), the Brazilian Vegetable Oil Industry Association (Abiove) and the United Nations Global Compact Brazil Network, we launched a Business Statement, calling for attention to necessary agenda. An agenda of the State and not of the government or party.
More than 70 companies have joined this movement. Since July, we have been meeting with the leadership of the Executive, Legislative, Judiciary and state governments to present this agenda and show how much Brazil loses and fails to gain by not adhering to more sustainable practices. Recent study led by WRI Brasil and which also included the participation of CEBDS, pointed out business prospects of R$ 2.8 trillion, with the generation of two million jobs by 2030, based on the adoption of the green economy in the post-pandemic period .
In the next columns I intend to unpack in this space a little more about this business activism, which CEBDS follows so closely. To the next.
(*) – Marina Grossi is president of the Brazilian Business Council for Sustainable Development (CEBDS) and writes in the first week of the month for Broadcast
