This Earth Day, on 22 April, businesses and organisations are being urged to Invest In Our Planet. So how can Boards help? Check out WOB's articles and resources on ESG, podcasts with sustainability experts and more to see how you and your Board can make a difference.
Read: Applying an ESG framework
In today’s business climate, environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues are increasingly important as organisations face mounting pressure to demonstrate greater commitment to values that reflect the contemporary demands of people and the planet.
Sustainability and transparency are increasingly associated with successful financial performance and value creation and have long-term investor appeal. For those companies choosing to report on ESG performance, a significant first step is to determine the appropriate reporting framework.
In this article BDO partner, Aletta Boshoff (National Leader 0 IFRS, Corporate Reporting & Sustainability) - host of WOB’s ESG: Opportunities and Risks for Boards webinar series - explains how to apply an ESG framework.
Read: Key Steps to Getting your ESG right
In this article, Clayton Utz’s Kathryn Pacey, Shae Mccartney and Stephanie Daveson, Clayton Utz delve into ESG, what it is and how to show your company is good at it.
Fundamentally, ESG is about doing business responsibly, they write. It is about having the trust of your stakeholders. It is about businesses acting in a way that is "right" – doing only what achieves legal compliance is no longer enough.
Environmental, social and governance or ESG is the hot topic of the moment. Regulators, shareholders, board members, investors, financiers, communities and other key stakeholders are holding companies that fail in their ESG obligations to account, and are demanding a clear agenda, open reporting and auditing.
Read more here
Read: The Board's role in ESG: listen to customers
A board that is prepared to effectively manage and mitigate ESG risks will help the community and their organisation to develop differentiated and crucial customer outcomes and products and services focussed on the future as well as enhancing shareholder value, writes ASX Non-Executive Director Cheryl Hayman.
In this article, Cheryl writes chairs and boards are now expected to have a sound working knowledge of not only what good ESG looks like, but exactly what’s right and what is not right for that company.
“As a starting point, all boards should know what a company does regarding ESG and where the business wants to get to in this domain,” she says.
Read more here
Read: Alison Rowe: ‘ESG is an ever-evolving concept’
In this interview, Nature Conservancy Australia Managing Director and Face of WOB Alison Rowe, talks about her passion for sustainability, the challenges and practical implications of ESG and why diversity is essential when addressing sustainability and climate change.
“Currently one of the main challenges of ESG, but one that makes it so exciting too, is that ESG is an ever-evolving concept. It has moved from the back page of an annual report to a dominant theme in corporate governance which encompasses climate change and risk, but also the culture of a workplace, its social license to operate and many more aspects of the business,” she says.
“People still need to understand the practical implications of ESG for operations. To keep driving forward ESG at Board level requires tenacity and resilience, but it’s a challenge worth fighting for every day.”
Read the full interview here
Be inspired: Going in green - How a passion for climate governance shaped Marianna O’Gorman’s Board future
In this Lessons from The Boardroom interview Marianna O’Gorman - a NED who works with companies ready to transition to a clean economy - talks about pursuing her passion for climate governance. Marianna’s career started at the World Bank in Washington DC working on its first organisation-wide climate change education program. She then moved to Canberra where she served as an adviser to the Prime Minister, Treasurer and later to the Minister for Climate Change, Industry and Innovation. In these public policy roles, she contributed to the design and implementation of a national carbon price and worked on the formation of (and later at), Australia’s Green Bank, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. She also represented Australia at climate negotiations in the Middle East, USA, Asia, UK and Europe.
Marianna mentors founders of early-stage clean tech with Energylab. She is a recipient of the AICD Regional Leaders Scholarship and the Ross Garnaut Prize for Climate Change research. Marianna holds a Masters of Climate Change, a Bachelor of Law with Honours and has completed the AICD Foundations of Directorship course.
Read more about Marianne’s Board journey here
Read more inspiring Lessons from the Boardroom interviews here
Watch: ESG - A Growing Issue for Boards webcast
If you missed the great WOBChat with Nature Conservancy Australia’s MD Alison Rowe and Australian Impact Investments’ Kylie Charlton discussing ESG and why it is a growing issue for Boards, you can now watch the recording - anywhere and any time. The webcast is part of a series of On Demand webinars available FREE to download for Full, Premium and Corporate members. Not a member? Click HERE to upgrade your membership.
Click HERE for the webcast
Watch: Will Our Climate be a Casualty of COVID?
In this recorded WOB panel presentation Dr Wendy Craik AM and Emeritus Professor Ian Nobel ask: Will Australia and the world have the money, the energy and the discipline to commit and carry through with CO2 emission reduction targets through cleaner energy and better practices, or will our climate be another casualty of COVID? Watch as a webcast, or listen as a podcast. The webcast is part of a series of On Demand webinars available FREE to download for Full, Premium and Corporate members. Not a member? Click HERE to upgrade your membership.
Click HERE for the webcast or podcast
Listen: Wendy Craik - A Woman of Many Firsts
Dr Wendy Craik AM is often described as a woman of many firsts - the first female head of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the first woman to lead the National Farmers' Federation and the first woman Chief Executive of the Murray Darling Basin Commission.
An independent public policy advisor, particularly on issues related to natural resource management, Wendy has over 25 years' experience in public policy including as former Chair of the Climate Change Authority - the body which reviews and advises the government on climate change policy. In this podcast Wendy talks to Claire about her long and interesting career, which has spanned much of our continent and concentrated around natural resource management.
Listen to the podcast HERE
Act: Find Environmental Sustainability Board roles
The WOB Vacancy Board features thousands of board and committee roles in the public, private, government and community sectors. Board vacancies are submitted by organisations and curated by WOB from a range of sources. Every vacancy is reviewed before being approved to go live on the website.
Our vacancy board grows each year. In 2021 we had 3,062 positions posted on the vacancy board - a 22% increase on 2019. Of these, 67.2% were remunerated in some way.
The Vacancy Board is available to our Full, Premium and Corporate members, reflecting the time and care taken to curate and maintain the vacancy board. Not a member? Click Here to Join.