Chief Sustainability Officers’ Forum

As a value creator, the private sector holds immense potential to unlock India’s development capabilities, and help the country achieve the 2030 SDG Agenda and ultimately realize its vision of becoming a developed nation by 2047. Climate change, however, threatens to stall this growth trajectory, with extreme climatic conditions testing the durability and resilience of economic activities.

Against this background, businesses will need to action strategies which ensure that their operations continue to remain sustainable. With businesses increasingly being scrutinized by stakeholders – regulators, investors, communities, and customers - their present actions will decide the future trajectory of their growth. In tandem with these external developments, businesses’ internal thinking on sustainability too, has evolved, with many choosing to view it as a strategic imperative – an opportunity – to be leveraged for future value creation.

Building a business case for sustainability, however, hinges on bringing together a team of individuals who understand the topic, share the requisite competencies, and possess the passion needed for implementing sustainability actions. Such a business imperative requires undertaking meaningful skill transition, and has emerged as a key of organizations. Practicing Chief Sustainability Officers are especially in want of frameworks that layout the requisite competencies expected of them as they work towards expediting actions on ESG within and beyond their organization.

In view of these emerging requirements, TERI is involved in developing the Chief Sustainability Officers’ Competency Framework with the support of more than 30 companies. TERI’s engagements with the practicing Sustainability Officers attempted to understand and trace the transformations of the job profile of the office of the Chief Sustainability Officer, mapping them against the expanding landscape of ESG, and the resultant change in the skills and competencies now expected from them.

Building on these set of recommendations and interventions, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) is convening a roundtable discussion of Chief Sustainability Officers on October 12 (Tuesday) from 11:00 – 13:00 hrs where key insights emerging from the development of the competency framework will be discussed. The session will seek to highlight the –

• Developments (internal and external) that is pushing Sustainability Officers to implement sustainability actions in their organization.
• Context-specific, tailored support that Chief Sustainability Officers are in need of, from across different departments (such as HR), to build their competencies and deliver the organization’s sustainability agenda.
• Trends being witnessed in skilling/ upskilling initiatives as ‘ESG’ considerations spread beyond the office of the Chief Sustainability Officer to other functions in the organization.