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Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL)

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Embargoed: 00.01hrs BST, Thursday, 2 July 2015

Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership launches 10-year plan to Rewire the Economy

 

The University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) is today launching its milestone report and new framework  Rewiring the Economy  to show how government, business and finance can work together to bring the economy into alignment with the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.

CISL's ten-year plan to transition towards a sustainable economy, authored by Dr Jake Reynolds, is built on ten interconnected tasks for government, finance and business. It is rooted in over twenty-five years of experience of working with global leaders in sustainability and was developed in consultation with CISL's network and alumni of over 6,000 business leaders, policymakers and academics. The report shows how the tasks can be tackled co-operatively over the next decade to create the conditions for business to become an engine for sustainable development, including by scaling up efforts already underway.

Polly Courtice, Director of CISL, explains: "While we are witnessing increasing numbers of business leaders collaborating with peers, politicians and policy makers to turn sustainability ambition into practice; it is undeniably the case that inequality is rising, ecosystems degraded, resources depleted and greenhouse gas levels are increasing. For an economy anywhere in the world to navigate these challenges its operating conditions must support rather than hinder sustainable business practice."

Dr Jake Reynolds, Director, Sustainable Economy at CISL and author of the report, said: "Progress on sustainability requires the combined creativity and determination of business, finance and government leaders. No one can do this alone and Rewiring the Economy calls on our extensive and diverse network of leaders to collaborate with us, and many others, to explore the tasks, make them their own, and promote them to their stakeholders for serious and consistent impact."

Starting with its network, CISL wishes the plan to become a strategic compass bearing for leaders across the business, government and finance spectrum, inspiring new collaborations, difficult discussions and, ultimately, a fundamental change in how the global economy is harnessed for social and environmental good.

Polly Courtice concludes: "This is not about creating a new model for sustainable development, the UN is doing that. It is about setting clear tasks within an achievable horizon, and catalysing collaborative action in the months and years to come from leaders across the world who recognise that operating within a new economic model is the only way forward."

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Read more about rewiring the economy on CISL's website: www.cisl.cam.ac.uk/rewire

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Notes to editors

About Cambridge and CISL

For 800 years, the University of Cambridge has fostered leadership, ideas and innovations that have benefited and transformed societies. The University now has a critical role to play to help the world respond to a singular challenge: how to provide for as many as nine billion people by 2050 within a finite envelope of land, water and natural resources, whilst adapting to a warmer, less predictable climate.

Within the University, the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) empowers business and policy leaders to make the necessary adjustments to their organisations, industries and economic systems in light of this challenge. By bringing together multidisciplinary researchers with influential business and policy practitioners across the globe, it fosters an exchange of ideas across traditional boundaries to generate new, solutions-oriented thinking. His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales is the Patron of CISL and plays an active role in its work.

A particular strength of CISL is its ability to engage actors across business, finance and government. With deep policy connections across the EU and internationally, dedicated platforms for the banking, investment and insurance industries, and executive development programmes for senior decision-makers, it is well-placed to support leadership in the real economy.

 

The Ten Tasks

Task 1: Measure the right things, set the right targets

Governments can set bold targets for social and environmental progress, and adopt new measures to track how well the economy is delivering them.

Task 2: Use fiscal policy to correct externalities

Governments can internalise environmental and social costs in economic activities through fiscal policy, benefitting sustainable business models.

Task 3: Drive socially useful innovation

Governments can use every opportunity to create drivers and incentives for innovation aligned with core sustainability goals, and should exemplify and enable sustainable business.

Task 4: Ensure capital acts for the long term

Investors of capital can demand more from their money, using their influence to drive long-term, socially useful value creation in the economy in the interests of their beneficiaries.

Task 5: Price capital according to the true costs of business activities

Capital providers, and those who regulate them, can jointly consider how to reflect social and environmental risk factors in the cost of capital.

Task 6: Innovate financial structures to better serve sustainable business

Financial intermediaries in particular can apply their influence and creativity to ramping up the flow of capital into business models that serve society's interests.

Task 7: Set a bold ambition, and innovate to deliver greater value

Companies can seek models of value creation that generate a fair social contribution within the natural boundaries set by the planet.

Task 8: Broaden the measurement and disclosure framework

Companies can build a fuller understanding of their impacts (and dependencies) on society, including the implications for capital allocation.

Task 9: Grow the capability and incentives to act

Companies can align their capital, talent and senior attention with a sustainable business vision, and ensure people are empowered to deliver.

Task 10: Harness communications for positive change

Companies can use their communications and marketing muscle to build public understanding of (and appetite for) sustainable business.


Contact

Zoe Kalus, Head of Media  

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