Governing Sustainability: Are sustainability committees the answer?

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CGIUKI’s thought leadership paper on sustainability committees.

More and more boards are facing pressures on their time and resource, as the number of issues on board agendas continues to swell. According to our research, the majority of boards see sustainability and ESG as being critical to doing business – but also face many hurdles to effectively overseeing these issues. Boards in organisations of all shapes, sizes and sectors are having to reconsider how they oversee ESG – and a dedicated committee at board level is one option.

Our thought leadership is based on a quantitative survey of 130 governance professionals, 26 qualitative interviews with organisations across several different sectors, and an analysis of committees amongst the FTSE 100. It helps organisations to:

• Understand the different ways in which they might choose to govern sustainability – including through a board-level committee
• Get to grips with which sustainability issues are relevant to the organisation’s own context
• Develop the board’s sustainability skillset
• Embed sustainable practices across different organisational functions
• Ensure a sustainability committee runs as effectively as possible, through carefully setting out its duties and its membership
• Value the importance of the governance professional in an organisation’s ESG response
• Take away 10 key tips for sustainability committee success

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