Innholdsfortegnelse for Fall 2021 i Corporate Knights

TEACH THE CHILDREN WELL In response to Jennifer Lewington’s article “Are Canadian Schools Raising Climate-Literate Citizens?” I’d just like to say that… teachers’ confidence [in teaching sustainability materials] is critical: every teacher can tackle new paradigms related to their subjects if they have a good mastery of them – teachers are long-term researchers and everlasting students; [they will be at] the core of revolutions to come. Making changes in schools means rethinking common spaces. We can cut our carbon footprint with basic actions, such as less water/paper/energy spending, the use of renewables, eco supply chains for food and beverages served within the schools, [and] promoting non-polluting transportation. But sustainability also means aligning with larger issues, such as those raised by the 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals [addressing gender equality,…

Some of the world’s largest food companies talk a lot about their plans to be more environmentally friendly, including bold commitments to (eventually) reduce their carbon footprint. But many of those corporations are failing to disclose information to investors about most of their greenhouse gas emissions, according to a recent analysis by non-profit Ceres. The organization found that out of 50 of the largest food companies in the United States and Canada, only 19 were disclosing at least some Scope 3 emissions. These are emissions in a company’s supply chain that are beyond the company’s direct operations and energy use. They can include the emissions from manufacturing fertilizers and raising livestock to those created when you cook a burger on a grill. Ceres estimates that they can often account for…

A global charging network grows, plugged and unplugged. In 2020, the number of publicly available charging stations for electric cars in China far outnumbered those in other countries, but that could change soon. In early September, oil company Shell announced it plans to build 50,000 on-street charging stations in the U.K. over the next four years. And in October, governors from five different states (and different political parties) agreed to build a network of charging stations throughout the American Midwest. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has also unveiled plans to install the country’s first stretch of wireless charging roads. The inductive technology doesn’t require drivers to stop at a charging station, since it recharges your batteries as you ride. Shipping goes green. Now that electric cars are primed to take over…

Ecuador & Bolivia In 2008, Ecuador became the first country to create a constitution that recognizes the right of nature to exist and regenerate. Bolivia followed in 2010 with a Rights of Mother Earth Law. United States Last year, Orange County, Florida, granted legal rights to all waterways, including two rivers. It is but one of several American jurisdictions to enact rights-of-nature laws, beginning in 2006 with the borough of Tamaqua in Pennsylvania, which declared toxic sewage dumping to be a violation of the rights of nature. New Zealand In 2017, a treaty agreement between New Zealand’s parliament and a Maori tribe declared the Whanganui River a “legal entity,” along with a former national park, Te Urewera, and Mount Taranaki. That same year, India’s Ganges and Yamuna rivers were declared…

Jennifer Lewington is an intrepid reporter and writes regularly on many topics, including business school news. Over the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic prodded some business schools to ask themselves an uncomfortable question: can we strengthen our teaching and research on sustainability? The answer, a strong yes, took shape with a willingness to further embed the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into course content and expand collaborations with non-business researchers also interested in environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. That strategy to go deep on curriculum and wide on research is a theme that resonates through the 2021 Corporate Knights Better World MBA Ranking. “The pandemic, for me, changed everything,” says Stephanie Schleimer, MBA director of Australia’s Griffith Business School, which took top spot in this year’s top-40…

Jennifer Story is associate director of climate advocacy at SHARE. Forty of Canada’s highest carbon-emitting firms have just been added to the list of companies being targeted by large institutional investors to develop more ambitious climate action plans. The new Climate Engagement Canada (CEC) initiative was launched in October by a group of more than two dozen of Canada’s largest asset managers, pension plans, insurers and banks. All agreed to collaborate on a three-year engagement program with the 40 companies to promote 1.5°C action plans with meaningful short-, medium- and long-term targets and to realign their capital expenditures and lobbying activities to support those goals. Two years ago, the federal government’s Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance came out with a set of far-reaching recommendations to help shift Canada’s financial sector…

As of June, Canada’s target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 is cemented in law. Now all government and industry leaders will need to work together to amp up their urgency and ambition. Canada committed to slashing emissions by 40 to 45% below 2005 levels within eight years. Here are some ideas on how we can get there. 1. Mandate that all new cars be electric by 2030 (not 2035) And offer 100% rebates to homeowners and workplaces that install electric vehicle chargers, while building at least 10 times more public charging stations across the country. 2. Close the carbon-tax loopholes for the largest polluters Canada’s biggest CO2 emitters pay next to no carbon tax. That needs to change if we want the carbon tax to be effective at driving…

According to a recent survey of 3,000 Canadians, more than two-thirds of workers say that it’s important for them to work for an employer that’s socially and environmentally responsible. Unfortunately, only 55% of workers agree that their organizations are both socially and environmentally responsible in their business practices. There is clearly an opportunity here for companies to do better. In recent years, the use of environmental, social and governance (ESG) indicators to measure a company’s performance has exploded in popularity – and with good reason. In addition to mounting public expectations for companies to be “good corporate citizens,” a 2021 meta-analysis conducted in partnership with NYU and Rockefeller Asset Management points to a growing body of evidence that good corporate management of ESG is tied to improved financial performance. But…

In recent months, Western governments have been drumming up support to rid products made in China’s Xinjiang region from their supply chains. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced in September that the EU will ban forced-labour products after several German clothing companies were accused of profiting from Uyghur labour in Xinjiang. Amnesty International has accused the Chinese government of carrying out massive, systematic abuses against two million Muslims in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in order to “forcibly assimilate [them] into a homogenous Chinese nation possessing a unified language, culture, and unwavering loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party.” In July, the U.S. Senate passed a bill banning all products made in Xinjiang. And this fall, Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff called for the U.S. to completely shed its reliance on…

Alex Robinson is an Ottawa-based writer and associate editor at Corporate Knights. It all started with an email. Mark McVeigh was procrastinating one day, as university students do, when he decided to contact Retail Employees Superannuation Trust (REST) – one of Australia’s largest pension funds – to ask what its policy was when it came to climate-change risk. The then-22-year-old Australian had been a member of REST since he worked at a grocery store as a teenager and wanted to know how it was investing his money. Inspired by what he had read about the power of shareholder activism, McVeigh sent an email to REST, asking what the pension fund was doing to gauge climate risk in its investments. REST representatives directed McVeigh to a generic one-line statement on its…

Indigenous perspectives have long been absent from business schools in Canada and other countries with significant Indigenous populations. But as societies globally look to redefine their relationship with First Peoples, schools are adding Indigenous content with new electives, revamped curricula and, occasionally, a mandatory course. Still, heavy lifting lies ahead. “Business schools and universities in Canada have been slow on this front,” concedes University of Alberta business dean Kyle Murray. “It’s something we probably should have been taking action on decades ago, but there is a lot more momentum now.” As Canada reckons with its dark history of residential schools and colonial attitudes to Indigenous people, some of that new momentum comes from individual professors. Earlier this year, inspired by a 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) event and a…

Are sustainable poultry claims all they’re cracked up to be?Putting chicken industry claims to the test Jessica Scott-Reid is a freelance writer covering animal rights and welfare and plant-based food topics. She is also a co-host of the Canadian animal law podcast Paw & Order. Most Canadians care about climate change. Some are even willing to alter what they eat in an effort to curb their individual impact on the planet. Beef in particular has taken much of the recent heat for its contribution to global warming, while chicken has flown under the radar. Chicken production comes with a notably smaller carbon footprint when compared to other meats. But as some experts point out, sustainability claims made by Canadian chicken marketers may not be all that they appear, and producing…

Mercedes-Benz: Carl Benz struggled to find his groove as a young man before designing a single-cylinder gasoline engine that he fired up for the first time in the German town of Mannheim on New Year’s Eve 1879. Seven years later, Benz fitted an improved version of the engine to a rickety three-wheeled vehicle, and his Benz Patent Motor Car model no. 1, generally credited as the world’s first automobile, took to the road. More than 130 years later, the luxury brand that bears Benz’s name is pulling out the stops to make its mark on a new generation of vehicles. Mercedes-Benz is now in the vanguard of mainline carmakers hoping to topple Tesla from its perch as the world’s top electric vehicle (EV) producer. Mercedes’s parent, Daimler, announced in July…

Bye-bye coal UN is calling for a rapid coal phase-out in developed countries and no new coal plants in developing economies like China and India. Ramp up renewables Solar and wind can meet world energy demand 100 times over. Adapt to the coming storms Build defences, warning systems and resilient infrastructure to protect homes, livelihoods and lives from floods and extreme weather. Speed up the switch to EVs U.K. and others will ban the sale of new fossil-fuelled cars by 2030. They want more countries to follow their lead. Let nature thrive Legally binding targets to restore forests, grasslands and wetlands – and making farming more sustainable – would remove more carbon from the air. Fund developing countries Developed nations need to deliver on their promise to raise at least…

From the development of the smallpox vaccine in 1799 to exposing the role of fake news on Twitter in the 2016 U.S. election, few American universities have produced as many advances in human knowledge as Harvard. In September, the elite school chalked up another breakthrough when its embattled president, Lawrence Bacow, announced that working with fossil fuel companies is not the best way to battle the climate crisis. It was a major reversal for Bacow, who has dodged protesters’ demands that Harvard’s US$40-billion worth of endowment funds divest all traces of oil, gas and coal investments. By the end of 2020, Harvard Management Co. (HMC), custodian of the world’s largest endowment, had actually reduced fossil fuel investments from 11% of its portfolio in 2008 to 2%. But as Bacow, a…

How important is it to you that you work for an employer that’s environmentally and socially responsible?…

A new survey of diversity in the sustainability sector has identified numerous biases and barriers that make this growing industry a bastion of white privilege. Toronto-based Diversity in Sustainability surveyed sustainability professionals in the U.K., the U.S. and Canada for its 2021 State of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Sustainability report. Of the 1,500 respondents, 65% identify as women, 35% are people of colour, 52% have caregiving responsibilities, and 13% have a disability. They polled a wide range of sustainability professionals working for corporations and non-profits, as well as public sector employees and self-employed individuals. Their findings: “Sustainability is an elite, privileged sector to work in – attracting those who have the means to do so,” says report author Heather Mak. “We found that 77% of sustainability professionals grew up…

Toronto journalist John Lorinc writes about cities, sustainability and business. Electrify everything. Over the past year, this mantra has become a rallying cry for many climate watchers, who argue that a critical step to achieving reductions in carbon emissions is to first transition huge fossil-fuel-intensive systems – transportation, space heating, et cetera – to electrical power. Then, with sufficient investment in renewables or nuclear energy, an expanded greener grid can provide the energy required to keep the economy moving. The process is called fuel switching. As technologies such as electric vehicles and electric heat pumps gain market acceptance, fuel switching seems increasingly plausible. “We have to do this really, really quickly,” says Simon Fraser University adjunct professor Chris Bataille, a climate policy analyst with IDDRI (L’Institut du développement durable et…

Roberta Staley is a Vancouver-based author, magazine editor, writer and documentary filmmaker. A whitewater rafting expedition on the Magpie River in Quebec begins with a 14-hour drive by car from Montreal, followed by a floatplane ride that deposits you somewhere along the 300-kilometre-long waterway. The return journey, by raft or kayak – navigating rapids, gorges and waterfalls – can take from five days to three weeks, depending upon where the floatplane drops you off. It’s little wonder that National Geographic calls the Magpie, whose tumultuous waters eventually tumble into the St. Lawrence River, one of the top 10 whitewater rafting expeditions in the world. “You meet nobody; you’re in total wilderness, surrounded by boreal forest,” says Pier-Olivier Boudreault, a conservation director for the Société pour la nature et les parcs…

Eighteen-year-old Swedish climate champion Greta Thunberg blasted world leaders for their “empty promises” at a Youth4Climate forum in Milan in late September. “There is no Planet B. There is no Planet Blah. Blah, blah, blah.” “This is all we hear from our so-called leaders. Words that sound great but so far have not led to action,” said Thunberg, calling out three decades of climate lip service as a betrayal of present and future generations. She’s not alone. A fall survey of 10,000 youth aged 16 to 25 in 10 countries found “widespread psychological distress” and feelings of betrayal over inadequate government response on climate. Faith in business is plummeting, too. According to Deloitte’s annual global survey of millennials and members of Gen Z, the number of youth who believe business…

Outside the classroom, business schools are redefining relations with Indigenous communities by learning to listen. In 2013, the University of Victoria’s Peter B. Gustavson School of Business founded the Indigenous Advancement of Cultural Entrepreneurship (I-ACE) program. The program bills itself as Canada’s only Indigenous co-designed entrepreneurship program delivered in First Nations communities and centred on their priorities. Since then, the school has worked with 67 Indigenous communities in British Columbia, producing 604 graduates and 200 start-ups. “We only do these programs when we are invited in to do so by communities or nations,” says Brent Mainprize, a Gustavson professor of entrepreneurship and Indigenous economic development, of I-ACE. “We work hand in hand with the community and nation to find [external] resources so we [are] not taxing a nation’s budget.” Former…