The REP Wrap: 32% of firms name board members in charge of sustainability

Your weekly summary of corporate sustainability news.

Companies have substantially increased their reporting on the sustainability responsibilities of individuals on their boards and executive committees. According to analysis by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 32% of sustainability reports include such information, up from 20% last year. “This supports a shift in accountability, with the move away from committee-level responsibilities towards more granular reporting on specific roles within committees,” noted the report. The number of companies disclosing the expertise of board members on sustainability topics decreased slightly over the same period, falling to 14%; while reporting on executive compensation linked to sustainability performance rose to 73%.  

EFRAG will host three webinars later this month about non-EU companies covered by the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. The EU advisory body will hold the sessions on November 19 and 20, to explore the development of the European Sustainability Reporting Standards for non-EU groups.

EFRAG is also recruiting academics for its dedicated panel on financial and sustainability reporting. Applications are being taken until December 16. 

The European People’s Party has proposed changes to the EU Deforestation Regulation. Ahead of a vote at Parliament on Thursday, the party now wants to exempt traders from the recently-delayed law, and postpone it for longer – two years, instead of one. Meanwhile, the world’s largest chocolate companies, including Nestle and Fererro, have reiterated the need to move forward with the rules to provide legal certainty to those companies covered by them. 

Swedish academics and scientists have launched a paper on how companies can operate within planetary boundaries. The report introduces the notion of ‘essential environmental impact variables’ which seek to provide a standardised way to capture the key environmental impacts of companies. “These impact disclosures must account for where, what, and how much impact happens,” the authors wrote. “Armed with this information, companies and their investors can gain a vastly more accurate insight into their impact and the resulting risks.”

Deloitte has published an explanation of how the EU Taxonomy Regulation addresses tax. The financial services giant provides recommendations to companies covered by the taxonomy, which includes tax within its requirements for minimum social safeguards – meaning an activity cannot fully qualify as green without meeting certain tax standards. 

UK think-tank E3G has produced an overview of EU transition finance and policy tools, including an assessment of the impact of incoming laws on how companies develop climate transition plans. Meanwhile, French professor Gregory Schneider-Maunoury has published a paper called Is the Announcement of a Climate Transition Plan of its Success, proposing an assessment framework for transition plans, tested using the 2023 annual reports of French companies. 

EU member states agreed to update the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive this week, meaning countries have until 2035 to remove human waste and chemicals from their sewage systems and treatment plants. The firms deemed responsible for the pollution will be required to pay for the improvements, in a move drugs company Zentiva has warned “might cause massive medicine shortages”. “The Directive mandates that only the pharmaceutical and cosmetic sectors finance the upgrades and running costs of several hundred wastewater treatment plants across Europe,” Zentiva said in a statement, adding that the industry was already struggling with rising energy and staffing costs, as well as supply-chain challenges. 

The US Government has effectively banned clothing made by one of the world’s biggest apparel companies from entering the country over concerns about its links to the oppression of the Uyghur people in China. Esquel Group and two of its affiliates have been added to the Department of Homeland Security’s Entity List, which is part of the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act.