Doing business within Planetary Boundaries

About this Insight Report

This report deep-dives into specific aspects of corporate reporting, nature-related risk assessments and sustainable investments that need reconsideration if we are to deliver on sustainability ambitions. It focuses on key hurdles and how to address them to turn the emerging new reporting and data landscape into a powerful engine for change and sustainability. By providing concrete examples, it illustrates how impact analyses can be improved and deployed if the disclosed environmental non-financial information – a necessary input for such analyses – adheres to a few scientifically grounded principles.

Businesses or corporate stakeholders

• Will gain an understanding of why focusing attention on disclosing primarily the most material environmental impacts impedes assessment of cumulative environmental impacts. This undermines our collective ability to gauge where we are in relation to planetary limits, and is likely to lead to unreliable assessments of climate and nature-related risks and inability to set informed targets (Chapter 2).
• Will get an overview of three key features that characterize meaningful environmental disclosures and a science-based guidance for prioritization of data collection and disclosing the most essential environmental impacts, depending on sector (Chapters 3-6).
• Will get insights into a new science-based tool – the Earth System Impact score (ESI) – that provides companies and their stakeholders with information about how a company’s local environmental impacts translate into global effects on climate and nature (Chapter 7). The ESI score can help businesses identify key areas for improving environmental performance and facilitating the development of strategic plans to enhance sustainability.

Investors

• Will gain an understanding of why focusing too narrowly on companies’ currently most financially material environmental impacts tends to undermine the reliability of climate and nature-related risks assessments and will likely lead to underestimation of or misinformed decisions about what constitutes relevant risks and opportunities for their investments (Chapter 2).
• Will get an overview of three key features that characterize meaningful environmental disclosures, and science-based guidance for prioritization of which environmental impact disclosures are the most essential in pursuing investments that can help economies stay within planetary boundaries (Chapters 3-6).
• Will get insights into a new science-based tool – the Earth System Impact score (ESI) – that provides investors with information about how a company’s local environmental impacts translate into global effects (Chapter 7). This information can aid investors in their company engagements by transparently identifying key areas for improving environmental performance and facilitating the development of strategic plans to enhance sustainability. Understanding the amplified effects of investments on the interactions between climate, land and water resources also improves the understanding of potential systemic risks.

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