The 3rd Chief Sustainability Officers' (CSO) Conclave

The 3rd CSO Conclave, hosted by TERI Business Council for Sustainable Development held on October 8, 2014 at New Delhi brought together practitioners from Indian as well as select global organizations to share vision and organizational best practices. The CSO Conclave is the culmination of a year-long engagement of TERI-BCSD with the corporates and it is also the beginning of engagement of CSO Forum for the following year. It is a platform to conceptualize, collaborate and co-execute business justified projects on issues of environmental and social relevance, specific to the industry. Having successfully concluded and presented the reports on engagements for the year 2013-14 at the 12th Leadership Summit for Sustainable Development, the Forum took on fresh projects for year 2014-15.

The conclave opened with an inaugural plenary session. The welcome address was delivered by Mr Dipankar Sanyal, CEO, TERI-BCSD, and it was followed by a dialogue by Dr Sean Axon, Group Sustainability Director, Johnson Matthey Plc. Delivering a global perspective, Dr Axon described the four stages of a sustainable business which can be applicable for most of the industries: compliance (to reduce risks), market driven (reduce costs), emerging (improve reputation), and finally shaping the future (increase revenue). Ms Namita Vikas, Senior President and Country Head, YES BANK Ltd. while talking about "Mainstreaming Sustainability in the Corporate Agenda" highlighted the role of leadership in creating a sustainable business strategy.

The plenary session was followed by a panel discussion on "Engaging Value Chain for Sustainable Development" which was chaired by Ms Rabab Fayad, Director - Regional Network, WBCSD. The panelists included Ms Beroz Gazdar, Senior VP, Group Sustainability, Mahindra & Mahindra and Mr Pooran Pandey, Executive Director, Global Compact Network India discussed about the tangible action points and challenges to absorb sustainability in the business strategy. The CSO Roundtable convened by Dr Sean Axon, Johnson Matthey and Mr Shankar Venkatewaran, Chief, Tata Sustainability Group highlighted the need to build capacities of procurement professionals to audit supplier themselves. The need to create a group sustainability standard/code for large Multi-National Corporations (MNCs) with multiple fields of operations specific to a business was also identified. The Conclave ended with the Working Groups deliberating about the projects that they want to undertake during the upcoming Chief Sustainability Officers' Forum 2014-15. These projects will focus on the areas of Energy Efficiency in Buildings, Value Chain in Sustainability, and Waste Management.