SEPTEMBER, 24

TOPICS

DECISION MAKERS & KEY VOICES IN SUSTAINABILTY
The role of sustainability and the ESG integration in this field is part of every country’s top agenda. The concept is now better defined at the management level, whether it is about managing the overall impact that the company's activity has, or about creating long-term value for stakeholders. According to studies, the integration of sustainability in the decision-making process has a long-term impact on operational performance. Sustainability is a process and countries put in place strategies and made the steps towards a sustainable future. Which are the steps and updates of Romania’s strategy on sustainability, from the perspective of Romanian Government representatives and authorities, together with the decision-making organizations and key voices in business communities in terms of sustainability?

SUSTAINABILITY FOR CITIES AND COMMUNITIES
Besides the macro-economic measures taken to enable sustainable projects and strategies, sustainability is the most visible in everyday life and function of a community. The sustainability principles refer to making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. These large concepts are practically visible in strategies and projects regarding housing, accommodation, transportation, urbanization, risk management to disaster, reducing the community impact in environment, etc. The city halls’ strategies should have a long-term budgeted strategy to meet sustainability targets and after all, there can not be any development or refurbishment project anymore that doesn’t include the sustainability fundamentals.

SUSTAINABILITY FOR BUSINESSES
The impact of sustainability targets and strategies to companies and industries is already present in countries ‘economy, breeding new business models, products and even new economy fields, in the context of a circular economy. Companies and businesses of all kinds started to implement steps for developing a sustainable business model and learned how to demonstrate the value of impactful investments. However, the entire sustainability as a transforming process of a society implies building the vocabulary and vision that clearly explains how to create a business culture of sustainability and leveraging sustainability for competitive advantage and driving long-term sustainable growth.

FINANCING SUSTAINABILTY
The European Commission launched in 2018 an Action Plan on Financing Sustainable Growth, which contains 10 initiatives, referring to, among others: establishing a clear, detailed and uniform taxonomy at European level for classifying sustainable activities and creating a Europe-wide standard on green bonds and eco-labels for sustainable financial products, promoting investment in sustainable projects and incorporating sustainability into investment advice. This translates at the financial level in Romania into aspects regarding the preparation of financial institutions to address and facilitate the transition to sustainable financing, the bank’s management of data attesting the sustainability performance of their customer portfolio and the evolution of the Romanian green credit market and not the least, the main existing sustainable financing programs and instruments and ways to be accessed.

PRACTICING SUSTAINABILITY: SUCCESS STORIES
Sustainability in business development is changing the way companies’ management teams formulate, address, and execute their roles. Major changes in the approaches of business leaders in recent years show that they have become increasingly preoccupied with the impacts of their activities, products, and business relationships on the environment and people. For this consideration, businesses that will successfully integrate sustainability principles at all levels will become best practices and benchmarks for other organizations and entire industries to follow.