The SD index has been developed in partnership with GlobeScan, an independent public opinion and stakeholder research company. The initiative was officially launched by Dr R. K. Pachauri, director general, TERI and Allen Ma, president, BT Asia Pacific in New Delhi, India.
The SD index report reveals that although Indian companies are taking positive steps towards sustainable development, the overall performance of the corporate sector is disappointing. Forty six per cent of India's opinion leaders surveyed blame a lack of awareness around sustainable development issues as the main cause of inaction. Some 40 per cent of opinion leaders also cited a lack of political will as a major obstacle to making significant progress in this area.
According to the report, this lack of action means India lags behind China, Japan and the European Union when it comes to addressing key issues, such as tackling climate change, corporate governance practices and water resource management.
Interestingly, the country's largest cities were seen as making the strongest moves to improve sustainable development practices.
While there are negative views around India's progress, a majority of opinion leaders (57 per cent) feel that companies in India are now more active with regard to sustainable development compared to one year ago. In fact, the corporate sector is considered to have made significantly stronger progress than either government or the general public.
On the launch, Allen Ma, president, BT Asia Pacific, said, “At BT, we absolutely view sustainability as an international issue and businesses cannot succeed in societies that fail. India is rapidly becoming a global centre for information and communications technology development, and boasts a high economic growth rate. It is vital that this commercial success is matched by a commitment to, and leadership in, corporate responsibility. We are constantly looking at the impact of our core business activities across the spectrum of social, environmental and economic issues. Through the launch of the BT Sustainable Development Index, we hope that other organisations in India will do the same.”
Added Nitin Desai, former United Nations under-secretary-general, economic and social affairs and advisor, BT’s SD Index, “There are significant social, environmental and economic challenges facing the world’s second most populous country and India’s transition to sustainable development is in the world’s interest. Given the importance of the issues at stake, there is a clear need for initiatives such as BT’s to help channel corporate sustainability efforts to where they can have the most beneficial impact. We need to be able to carefully monitor where corporate successes are occurring and to learn from them. We also need to reliably know which aspects of sustainable development most urgently require corporate action.” |
