UNCTAD urges stronger action to help least developed nations tap into carbon markets
The United Nations Trade and Development (UNCTAD) urged during the 29th United Nations Climate Change ...
CIB’s Abdel Kader: Integrating ESG vital for sustaining growth
Dalia Abdel Kader, Chief Sustainability Officer of Commercial International Bank (CIB), stressed integrating the environmental, social and governance (ESG) dimensions is essential to sustain growth.
During the 12th Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainable Development (12th CSR Forum), she said “sustainability is the connection between economic dimension and environmental, social and governance.”
Sustainable finance is that all funding coming out of the bank should achieve four things; economic value, environmental value, social and governance. The aim of lending money is no more meant to get financial profit only, she added.
“After hundred years of relentless pursue of growth, what are we having? We are witnessing – as a whole world – environmental crisis, deforestation, pollution, and social and political unrest. At a time when we saw that growth means making profit, we were not even growing.”
“This urges us to consider what is growth about. It is mainly about profit, but to sustain it, you will have to integrate the environmental, social and governance dimensions.”
She referred to a report issued by the Club of Rome in 1972 under the title of “The Limits to Growth” which said that “if humanity continue with the same pattern of production and consumption, we will reach zero growth in hundred years, because Earth has biocapacity and we cannot sustain resources.”
“But We continued with growth without ESG to make profit,” she said, this has led to the financial crisis in 2008 and this was a systemic crisis so that it did not stop, but kept loading. In 2020, it was the COVID-19 crisis that caused the worst economic crisis since the World War II.
A coming crisis is expected to happen which is an environmental and climate crisis that would far outperform the impact of COVID-19, “So, we have to prepare,” she highlighted.
“we are not facing only risks, but we are also facing opportunities if we change business models. Crisis takes place when we continue facing the rising challenges with the same business models,” she expounded
“We are racing with time,” she said, noting that “Egypt and MENA region will be heavily affected by climate change, however we still have opportunities if we join forces as corporates and banks and move fast.”
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