Climate Change for Professionals

In this course not only we will explore the latest academic thought leadership on the subject of corporate sustainability, but we will look at the evolution of this concept from purely environmental concerns, to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Triple Bottom Line (TBL) approach, to the concept of the business value creation. You will learn about stakeholders' value, ESG risks, and opportunities that corporate sustainability creates for the businesses.

This course will equip you with the tools and knowledge necessary to prepare and defend a business case for sustainability initiatives/projects, whether that is required for management sign off, approval by the board of directors, regulatory reporting, or for any business-as-usual activities (eg project management, progress monitoring and other stakeholders communications). It will also give you some food for thought regarding how the environmental and social costs and benefits are currently priced, and whether more attention should be paid to pricing negative and positive externalities.

The course briefly covers the measurement techniques that could be used for building the business case, including the Return on Investment (ROI), Social Return on Investment (SROI) and Sustainable Return on Investment (S-ROI), including deeper dive into an example of such methodologies, called Return on Sustainable Investment (ROSI) developed by NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business.

Finally, this course covers important considerations for an organisation's Sustainability Strategy development: how to integrate sustainability into business strategy, the role of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in shaping corporate sustainability strategy, materiality assessment and sustainability reporting. I have also included a brief overview of sustainability certifications including B-Corp and key environmental and social responsibility ISO standards for those who consider getting external validation for their businesses or products/services.

I hope you will enjoy the course. Please note that the topic of Corporate Sustainability is a vast subject, which is impossible to cover in much technical detail in such a short course. But I would love to hear from you - please let me know what parts of the course are particularly useful, and where you suggest I could develop this course further.