Date: 2024-04-28 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00018629
Sustainability Accounting Methods
SASB (Sustainability Accounting Standards Board)
Well Wishes from SASB ... TPB response to the SASB message from Janine Guillot
Peter Burgess
Dear Peter,
Amidst this challenging time our world faces, and the mass disruption it has caused, I can only hope that this email finds you safe and healthy. I’m writing to update you that SASB remains operational during this time, with our staff working 100% remote and all travel suspended. While there is much uncertainty in the world, the staff remains certain about the importance of our mission and our ability to come together in these new circumstances. We continue to make progress on our ten research and standard-setting projects, the format of which lends well to remote collaboration. Additionally, we are working to transition our calendar of global events, roundtables, and convenings to online forums. Our goal is to be able to engage with you, our SASB stakeholders, at a continuous level but in a virtual manner. Please reach out to us if you have questions, comments, or ideas.
The most urgent and important work being done today is that of our health care workers, grocery employees, delivery people, and other heroes on the front lines of meeting society’s most basic and critical needs. We recognize the work you are doing in the ESG space is also important. The pandemic touches on many issues relevant to sustainability and ESG disclosure—for example, human capital management issues (such as employee health and safety and paid sick leave) are critical at this time, as are governance issues (such as business continuity planning and critical incident risk management). By bringing the interests of business and society in closer alignment, we can hopefully one day create a world that is more resilient to threats such as this one.
From everyone at SASB, we wish you safety and security during this difficult time. Please take care.
Best regards,
Janine Guillot SASB CEO
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A response to the SASB message from Janine Guillot
Peter Burgess
5:29 PM (0 minutes ago) to info
In my view SASB is an incredibly important initiative. When it started I did my best to participate and contribute to its design and development. I was an active participant in several of the sector working groups in the early days of SASB development.
Over time I it became clear to me that what I wanted to see happen, and what SASB was setting out to do was diverging substantially ... but I am old and not easily stopped. I wanted to see an easy and widely accepted way of quantifying social impact and environmental impact very similar to the very powerful way in which the conventional financial accounting system accounts for profit and economic activity. I wanted SASB to describe how the quantification of important impact should be done ... I wanted more numbering and less words.
More broadly, I am also something of a critic of the sustainability community and its priorities. The United States economy is catastrophically unsustainable, and the question should be simply by how much? The current coronavirus crisis is a grim reminder that the US economy has become the most profitable in all of history, but is catastrophically fragile and might be in the process of breaking beyond repair. When (if) poor countries were to become as environmentally inefficient as the USA there is a need for about 7 planets to sustain the environmental consumption (depletion and degradation)
One of my issues over the past several years has been the way in which the accounting profession and the financial community address the issue of risk. In my view the accounting profession is taking a weak posture when it comes to both social and environmental risks, and I think we are starting to see this playing out ... Pacific Gas and Electricity has taken bankruptcy protection and one cannot imagine the social and economic cost of the coronavirus crisis crisis.
My big regret is that my work with TrueValueMetrics.org has been far too slow and is about three decades too late. However ... better late than never.
Is there anything that I can do to help?
PeterB
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Peter Burgess ... Founder and CEO
TrueValueMetrics ... Meaningful Metrics for a Smart Society
True Value Impact Accounting ... Multi Dimension for ALL the Capitals
http://www.truevaluemetrics.org
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/peterburgess1/
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