Where do companies tend to fall down? Sustainability often takes the form of “motherhood and apple pie” statements: an unshakeable commitment to integrity; “our people are our greatest asset”, and so on. Companies seem to struggle most with the transition from the lofty to the mundane – yet to be credible, they need to convince investors that their policy commitments are integrated into capital expenditure planning and day-to-day decision-making. Nobody expects this to be easy or quick, and a bit of humility is always a good insurance policy when tackling such a rapidly moving target.
…and for public policy By their very nature, sustainability challenges are bigger than any one company – or put otherwise, a company acting alone can rarely solve a problem without risking competitive disadvantage. Think about corruption: if everyone bribes and nobody gets punished, the incentive to take the high road and lose business is unconvincing. Similarly climate change: beyond the low-hanging fruit of energy efficiency gains, investing in high-risk, long-payback technologies in order to slash CO2 emissions when regulations favor high emitters makes no sense, and will quickly alienate investors.
And yet, if rationality were to prevail, bribes would be stopped and lower carbon emitters rewarded. The next stage in the uncharted territory that is sustainable development lies in responsible public policy engagement. Increasingly, enlightened companies and their investors are recognizing the role that businesses should play in shaping the political environment. Such change will send the right signals in the economy and induce companies to behave responsibly without facing a financial penalty.
Will the pendulum swing back? As the saying goes, “never let a good crisis go to waste”. The current credit crisis has jolted many institutional investors out of their complacency, and spurred them to take a more active interest in the governance of the companies they hold. Will this survive the next bounce in the cycle? Many will lose interest and be seduced again by the lure of rapid gains. But as painful as the credit crunch has been and promises still to be, it pales in comparison with the climate-induced crunch that awaits if we fail to learn the biggest lesson of all: that markets tend to disregard unconventional risks, even when they are well known; that long-term costs tend to be discounted, particularly when they cannot be easily quantified; that markets are poor at dealing with externalities and require concerted intervention to address them. In this case, the challenges posed by, say, our need to respect the limits of the earth’s ability to sustain human life, are being recognized by a rapidly growing body of institutional investors. These stewards of our retirement savings are conscious of the leverage over corporate behavior they exercise through the vast pools of capital they control, and are prepared to use it. They are doing this in order to ensure that they deliver an old age that is not only financially secure, but also safe, clean, healthy and socially stable.
Karina Litvack is a Director and Head of Governance & Sustainable Investment at F&C Management, part of the global asset managers F&C Group.