IRRC Institute Report Released: Integrated Financial and Sustainability Reporting in the United States

Recently, the Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute (IRRC), "a not-for-profit organization . . . [which] serve[s] as a funder of environmental, social and corporate governance research" released a report titled, Integrated Financial and Sustainability Reporting in the United States (2013). The 290-page report available here, discusses how,

[e]very company in the S&P 500 except one reports some form of sustainability disclosure, but fewer quantify those disclosures in terms of bottom line impacts, accordi"ng to a new report from the IRRC Institute (IRRCI) and the Sustainable Investments Institute (SI2). That report is the first to comprehensively benchmark the status of integrated reporting in the U.S.
. . .
The 285-page report analyzes sustainability disclosures on a sector-by-sector basis, and examined a total of 56,000 individual data points, across both mandated SEC filings and voluntary sustainability reports. The report examined disclosures for 2012. Looking across the entire S&P 500, the report discovered that:

• 499 companies made at least one sustainability related disclosure, but only 7, or 1.4% integrate financial and sustainability reporting. Zions Corporation is the only company not to include any sustainability disclosure across the various reports examined. The 7 companies which included a statement on integrated reporting were American Electric Power, Clorox, Dow Chemical, Eaton, Ingersoll Rand, Pfizer and Southwest Airlines.
• Nearly three quarters (74 percent) of the companies placed a dollar figure on at least one sustainability-related initiative, though they frequently also mentioned other initiatives whose benefits/costs were not quantified.
• 43.4% of the companies linked executive compensation to some type of sustainability criteria.

A webinar to review the report findings is scheduled for Friday, May 3, 2013, at 2 PM ET (Register here).

Fouling Our Nest: Is An (Environmental) Ethic Impotent Against (Bad) Economics?-- Pace Law School Dyson Lecture

The annual Dyson lecture will be held on February 9, 2012 at 4:00 p.m. in the Judicial Institute Lecture Hall on the Pace Law School campus.

Speaker: Heidi M. Hurd, former Dean of the University of Illinois College of Law, and Professor of Law and Philosophy

Topic: Fouling Our Nest: Is An (Environmental) Ethic Impotent Against (Bad) Economics?

What is the moral nature of nature's capital?  How do market failures contribute to the degradation of the environment?  Why is there no comprehensive ethical and philosophical account of why environmental damage and destruction is immoral?  This lecture will explore the problem posed by the very field of environmental ethics and reveal the philosophical conflict that undergirds of our moral ambivalence towards nature and the environment.

The event is free and open to the public.  To obtain additional information, contact Prof. Brigit Crawford at bcrawford@law.pace.edu.