Corporate Drivers Towards Sustainability: Carrots and Sticks

This presentation will summarize developments that motivate corporations to adopt more sustainable practices and principles ahead of mandatory command and control regulation. Beginning with basic risk management principles, the presentation will review developments that formed the basis for sustainability concepts including litigation, regulation of waste, protection of resources, increased scientific knowledge regarding impacts to the environment and public health, increased population density, greater transparency and conflict. The presentation will continue with a summary of current sustainability principles, voluntary programs and developments, such as guidance from the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding material risk, increased shareholder activism and President Obama’s Executive Orders, serving to motivate corporations to move forward with revised business models incorporating sustainable decision making, as well as critical developments arising with and after the 2015 Paris Climate Conference which hosted the 21^st Conference of the Parties (COP21) and the Sustainable Innovation Forum 2015.