Program

Monday, February 3rd, 2020

1:00pm to 5:00pm

UN Global Compact and Global Compact Network USA: SDG Summit

Held Monday, Feb. 3, this half-day event will be an afternoon of powerful discussions and guidance about corporate leadership and progress toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The program will include discussion of the role of business in the United Nations’ sustainable development agenda, innovation for the SDGs, corporate finance for the SDGs, reporting on the SDGs and more, led by experts from the U.N. Global Compact and others. The event is open to representatives from companies and other member organizations in the U.N. Global Compact, as well as those considering making a commitment to the U.N.Global Compact and deeper engagement with the SDGs. Register here.

Tuesday, February 4th, 2020

8:30am to 12:00pm

Tutorial: Aligning and Integrating Your Sustainability Strategy with the SDGs

Tutorial

Paradise Ballroom 5-6, Camelback Inn

Join leading organizations WBCSD, U.N. Global Compact and GRI for an in-depth, interactive tutorial that will explore the implications of the Sustainable Development Goals for business, highlight emerging trends and developments across the business and SDG landscape, and underline best practice around strategic alignment with the SDG agenda. This session will address key enablers and barriers to effective integration of the SDGs into business strategy as well as trends in corporate reporting and how best to account for your SDG progress. Participating in this tutorial will help you develop a comprehensive SDG strategy for your own organization.

Agenda:

8:30-8:55 AM: Welcome and Context Setting

8:55-9:45 AM: Part 1: Understanding Your Baseline and Principled Prioritization (facilitated small group discussions)

9:45-10:35 AM: Part 2: Making the SDGs Actionable for Business: Stepping Up Ambition and Effective Integration (panel)

10:35-10:55 AM: Networking and Coffee Break

10:55-11:45 AM: Part 3: Reporting and Communicating (panel)

11:45 AM - 12:00 PM: Wrap-Up and Next Steps

4:00pm to 5:00pm

Climate Action Simulation: An Interactive Experience Creating a 2° Scenario

Workshop

Arizona Ballroom L-M, Camelback Inn

Climate action is needed, but what will it take to tackle the problem? How can we understand whether our actions will be enough to get the job done? Join leaders from Climate Interactive and HSBC for a fast-paced, interactive exercise where you get to test your strategies and assumptions for combating climate change. Built by MIT Sloan School of Business and the NGO, Climate Interactive, over the past seven years, and building on models that go back 30 years, EN-ROADS lets users test assumptions around renewable energy, afforestation, efficiency, transportation electrification, and a dozen other climate strategies. The resulting experience is hopeful, scientifically-grounded, action-oriented, and eye-opening. Please bring your laptop to create your own 2° scenario during the session (Chrome 57+, Firefox 52+ or Safari 11+ browsers).

Wednesday, February 5th, 2020

8:30am to 9:30am

The Urgency of Working Together for the Climate Results We Need

Workshop

Arizona Ballroom D-E, Camelback Inn

The climate crisis requires us to act fast and collectively, but how? As more companies are beginning to declare carbon neutral and net zero strategies and goals, it’s become clear that companies going down this path need to align on these definitions, set science-based goals, and balance residual emissions with insetting. Without clear direction to reach 1.5C, these goals and climate strategies can easily become muddled, irrelevant and risk deviating from sound scientific standards.

In this session, Quantis will use visualization exercises, audience engagement and peer-to-peer collaboration to explain:

Why companies are starting to move now even though we have known about climate issues for 50 years
What climate strategies are relevant to meet the 1.5C threshold for science-based targets and stay relevant for the long-term
What is the secret key to making the impossible possible

Are Some Product Claims Too Good to be True?

Workshop

Paradise Ballroom 7-8, Camelback Inn

Advertising claims are a key driver for consumer decision-making and brands are keen on competitively highlighting the best attributes for the products they sell, but it’s often difficult to tell fact from fiction for some environmental and safety claims on the shelf. From "free-of" to "ozone-friendly" to myriad certifications and seals of approval placed on products daily, hear from brand manufacturers on the current state of the claims market and the process and challenges faced in accurate communication of product claims to consumers.

How to Be an SDG Innovator

Workshop

Paradise Ballroom 1, Camelback Inn

Join this session to explore creative approaches to advancing the SDGs centered in design-thinking and innovation. Learn from this year's cohort of the sustainability accelerator Young SDG Innovators Programme, future leaders who are developing and driving solutions through new technologies, initiatives, and business models, and delivering on their company’s sustainability objectives.

12:15pm to 1:15pm

Roundtable Lunch: Business Leading the Way to a 1.5°C Future

Roundtable Lunch

In this interactive discussion, participants will explore why setting targets aligned with 1.5°Celsius is important, highlight examples from the business community on how this can be done and lessons learned from those who have gone before, explore the critical gaps or needs companies have to overcome in setting and achieving 1.5°C targets, and outline some of the specific actions or steps companies can take to align their business strategies with 1.5°C.

About Roundtable Lunches: Join interactive lunch discussions, moderated by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants. All roundtable lunches do not have advanced sign-up — participation is first-come, first-served.

Roundtable Lunch: Climate Risk and Strategy – Getting Past the “Disclosure” in TCFD

Roundtable Lunch

The Task Force on Climate-Related Disclosures has helped motivate many companies to think about climate risk from a investor relations angle – “disclosure” is in the name. Yet, most of the value comes from the risk and strategic processes it encourages. Many processes only end up generating a limited amount of transparency for no real benefit to the firm or investors. At this session we will discuss the challenges and some of the solutions of getting TCFD to deliver value, rather than being just a another reporting burden.

About Roundtable Lunches: Join interactive lunch discussions, moderated by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants. All roundtable lunches do not have advanced sign-up — participation is first-come, first-served.

Roundtable Lunch: Leveraging 'Materiality' in the Stakeholder Era

Roundtable Lunch

Sonoran Terrace

The Business Roundtable’s renewed statement on "the purpose of a corporation" said that firms are better positioned to fulfil their social purpose if they consider all their stakeholders — not just their shareholders. But with a multitude of stakeholder interests and perspectives vying for your attention, where on earth should you begin? Materiality assessments can help companies identify what matters to whom, and where the biggest risks and opportunities for engagement are. In this discussion, you’ll learn what a materiality assessment actually is, which materiality frameworks are leading the pack, why the concept of materiality is growing in importance and why including a multi-stakeholder perspective can give your sustainability strategy a new competitive edge.

About Roundtable Lunches: Join interactive lunch discussions, moderated by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants. All roundtable lunches do not have advanced sign-up — participation is first-come, first-served.

1:30pm to 2:30pm

Assessing Physical and Climate Risks: Linking Risk Management and Sustainability Expertise

Workshop

Paradise Ballroom 7-8, Camelback Inn

Extreme weather and the associated physical risks are having increasing impacts on organizations’ assets, operations, supply chains and employees, and organizations are looking to better understand their current and future exposures. Currently, the focus of most corporate risk management efforts is on identifying, assessing and managing such risks to support business continuity and determine risk management approaches such as annual insurance purchasing. Risk managers assesses these risks using a variety of standard tools and methods which generally rely on historical data to determine future loss trends. In contrast, sustainability professionals are focused on developing long-term forward-looking physical risk assessments and climate risk assessments which can be difficult to align with risk managers’ assessments. This session will provide an inside look at how risk managers assess physical and extreme weather risks, how this analysis can enhance and be supported by a sustainability team’s climate risks assessments, and tips on how to bridge departmental efforts and enhance the resilience of the enterprise to shifts in physical risk driven by climate change.

Feeding the ESG Ecosystem: How Is Environmental Data Used in the Marketplace?

Workshop

Arizona Ballroom L-M, Camelback Inn

Over 8000 companies self-report environmental data to CDP, feeding into an ecosystem of ESG data which is used widely by investment, business, city and policy communities to make important decisions, manage risk and capitalize on opportunities. During this session, you’ll hear how these stakeholders harness and apply this corporate environmental data, understand current trends of ESG data, as well as learn the unexpected ways in which your data might be used by others.

2:30pm to 2:45pm

The Future of Corporate Water Stewardship

Booth Session

ASU Booth, Paradise Ballroom

Evolving from standards to collaborative action with science based targets.

2:45pm to 3:45pm

Understanding Your Biodiversity Impacts to Help Life Thrive

Workshop

Arizona Ballroom L-M, Camelback Inn

Governments and businesses must consider water use, GHG emissions and biodiversity indicators in order to achieve sustainable development. For two of the three, society has been able to develop metrics and SMART targets. The last, biodiversity, has proved more difficult to measure due of its unique inherent place-based complexity and variability. But protecting the biodiversity that makes up Earth’s environment is essential for ensuring a healthy and productive planet. This session will share a new multi-step framework developed through a collaborative partnership comprised of three environmental organizations, Conservation International, Flora and Fauna International, UNEP-WCMC, as well as multiple extractive-sector companies engaged in piloting the approach. The partnership will identify and develop indicators that track from site-level impact upwards to a company dashboard. These indicators will allow companies to better measure and address their direct impact on biodiversity and make more informed decisions, while also being able to report on their contribution toward global biodiversity targets, such as the Sustainable Development Goals.

4:15pm to 5:15pm

The New Math of Full Value Decision Making: Understanding Social, Human and Natural Capitals

Workshop

Arizona Ballroom J-K, Camelback Inn

Despite the Sustainable Development Goals and a multitude of well resourced ESG initiatives, we are still not bending the curve to address society’s global sustainability imperative. Although stakeholders want to transition towards a sustainable future they do not know how, in part because decision makers often focus solely on financial information and ignore the value of our essential relationships with nature and people. The session will point the way on how to sustainability executives can pivot business models towards a more sustainable and prosperous future.

Thursday, February 6th, 2020

12:30pm to 5:00pm

GRI Reporters' Summit North America

Paradise Ballroom South, Mountain Shadows

Held Thursday afternoon, Feb. 6, this half-day event offers practical solutions to improve your sustainability reporting. Learn how to make the most of the GRI Standards for your organization, share your knowledge and connect with your peers. The program will include information for reporting professionals of all levels of experience. Whether you want to focus on the fundamentals such as materiality and stakeholder engagement or delve into emerging reporting expectations such as TCFD, this is the day for you to learn and recharge. Join us and interact with GRI experts directly to answer your specific reporting needs. Register here — get 10% off using code GRI20WGBZ.

Program

Materiality & Metrics