Sustainability in a general sense can be seen as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Environmentalists have long warned that our current patterns of economic growth and resource consumption, so severely threaten the earth's carrying capacity that ecological collapse is likely, if not inevitable.
BSE being a responsible stock exchange is taking various initiatives in the domain of sustainability and corporate social responsibility. BSE has launched theme based indices like S&P BSE Carbonex and S&P BSE Greenex. BSE is also participating in the sustainable stock exchanges initiative. BSE has signed Memorandum of Understanding with Ministry of Corporate Affairs to launch corporate social responsibility index.
- Sustainable Stock Exchanges (SSE)
The United Nations had been playing a catalyzing role through a series of Global Dialogues - held in New York (2009), Xiamen (2010) and Rio de Janeiro (2012) - the initiative had become a platform for exploring how exchanges can work with investors, regulators and companies to enhance corporate sustainability and promote responsible investment.
The Exchange's pro-active work had been noticed by UNCTAD. UNCTAD has approached BSE to get on board of SSE by signing the commitment letter to promote long term sustainable investment and improved environmental, social and corporate governance disclosure
BSE is the first stock exchange from Asia to join Sustainable Stock Exchange Initiative.
"We are hopeful that this initiative would help us in further introducing a culture of sustainable business practices amongst BSE's listed companies" BSE's MD & CEO Ashishkumar Chauhan.
- BSE - Corporate Social Responsibility Index.
BSE and Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs (IICA - Established by Ministry of Corporate Affairs), have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on September 23, 2013 to work collaboratively in the domains of business sustainability, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), investor education and other allied areas.
BSE - IICA are going to launch Corporate Social Responsibility Index. An Advisory Committee (AC) consisting officials from IICA and BSE is formed to guide the CSR Index construction, design and roll-out processes. This Advisory Committee will be having a consultative approach and shall interact with various stakeholders.
"CSR and sustainability are two extremely important topics for 2013, especially with the passing of The Companies Act 2013. They also represent the aspirations of youth as well as society. This conclave being very timely and the discussions being detailed, I'm sure the participants will be able to gather a lot of executable knowledge about how to go about in setting up the CSR framework in their organizations when they go back." said Mr. Ashish K. Chauhan, MD & CEO, BSE Ltd. on the occasion of "CSR & Sustainability Conclave 2013" organized by Dun & Bradstreet.
http://www.dnb.co.in/News_Press.asp?mid=323
CSR Resources
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in BSE is aligned with its tradition of creating wealth in the community with a three pronged focus on Education, Health and the Environment. Besides funding charitable causes for the elderly and the physically challenged, BSE has been supporting the rehabilitation and restoration efforts in earthquake-hit communities of Gujarat. BSE has been awarded the Golden Peacock Global - CSR Award for its initiatives in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by the World Council of Corporate Governance.
- BSE - Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) initiative
BSE signed Memorandum of Understanding with CDP India to jointly carry out activities for creating awareness about filing sustainability data / Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) data with CDP.
CDP is a nonprofit organization which works with other CDP entities worldwide to provide a transformative global system for thousands of companies and cities to measure, disclose, manage and share environmental information. CDP India is actively in touch with Top 200 (BSE-200 constituents) companies to encourage them to report non financial data. The data received from CDP will be used for the calculations of S&P BSE Carbonex.
https://www.cdp.net/EN-US/WHATWEDO/Pages/India.aspx
"BSE with more than 5,200 listed companies is one of the largest Exchanges in the World and the first Exchange from Asia to join United Nations Sustainable Stock Exchanges (SSE) initiative. BSE's objective is for Indian Companies to look beyond shareholder value and make sustainability a core driver of their strategy. S&P BSE Carbonex Index, using CDP data, calculated by Asia index Private Limited is a key step in this direction. S&P BSE CARBONEX uses risk-tilted version of established S&P BSE-100 index. Weights of the constituents are adjusted to reflect their climate risk relative to industry peers. In addition, the BSE has also entered into an MOU with Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs established by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India for creating benchmarks indices in the area of Corporate Social Responsibility." Ashish Kumar Chauhan MD & CEO BSE Ltd
CDP India 200 climate change report2013 Report - "Energy efficiency driving the climate change response in Indian high performing companies" https://www.cdp.net/CDPResults/CDP-India-200-Climate-Change-Report-2013.pdf