Sustainability & ESG Business Summit 2022

A recording of these remarks can be found on YouTube and Tencent Video

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I thank the British Chamber of Commerce Shanghai for the invitation to address the 2022 Sustainability and ESG Summit.

Three years on, we are still experiencing worldwide economic shocks from the COVID-19 pandemic. Coupled with the impacts of a worsening climate crisis, existing and new conflicts, and new threats to food and energy security, we have seen global progress stall in achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In the remaining years of the Decade of Action, all sectors of society, including governments, the private sector, civil society and individuals, need to mobilize to confront these challenges and realize the promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) framework can support this, by allowing companies and investors to understand how organizations can manage risks and opportunities around sustainability issues. Looking beyond risk management, adopting this lens in tandem with the targets set by the SDGs can be a driver for innovation and create long-term value for business and society.

The ESG investment market in China has developed rapidly in recent years, as seen in an increasing trend of voluntary ESG reporting. This occurs as China works to fulfil key goals around green development, most notably its pledge to reach peak carbon emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060. ESG reporting, an emerging global trend, is now ascending in China, allowing companies to also transition to a low-carbon business model.

While ESG investments in China are growing, significantly more efforts are needed to accelerate and expand this market. Beyond ESG considerations, it remains critical that all businesses in China work to adopt the SDGs in full, to drive the longevity of their business models, from the supply chain to production lines, distribution networks and so forth.

On this, the United Kingdom, in its own net-zero transition, has recently mandated its largest businesses to report their climate-related risks and opportunities, in line with ESG considerations. This is a welcome development.

Despite the concrete actions that have taken place, there is a real risk that ESG and the SDGs are only addressed performatively, or solely as a PR instrument. All stakeholders, including relevant industry associations and Chambers of Commerce, should get together and agree upon compliance standards to ensure that there is no risk of greenwashing.

The UN in China is committed to supporting these efforts to allow further consensus in this area between China and countries such as the UK.

Profit should not come from creating the world’s problems but from solving them. Here, the UN Global Compact is the flagship UN agency for responsible businesses, and the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative supported by nearly 16,000 corporate members from over 160 countries, including almost 600 companies from China and about 850 from the UK.

During the past 22 years, UN Global Compact has helped the private sector find entry points to UN partnerships and advance the implementation of the SDGs. It has also allowed the UN system to better engage the private sector while mainstreaming the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact, in Human Rights, Labour, Environment and Anti-Corruption.

There are opportunities to engage with the UN system in China for companies who wish to lead in the net-zero transition and take action. This year, I attended the “2022 Leaders Summit China Plenary Session”, to encourage private sector action on sustainability and feature innovative examples of how multi-stakeholder partnerships are unlocking new business opportunities and capital, while also driving impact on the ground. We are keen to see further collaboration.

Dear friends,

Global challenges require global solutions, found only through multilateralism. Accordingly, the UN will continue to encourage more multi-stakeholder partnerships to accelerate our global progress on the SDGs.

I wish you productive deliberations at today’s summit. Thank you.