Critics, experts in demand for sustainability panels

MORE companies are making the effort to avoid having their sustainability decisions made in an echo chamber – by having on tap some of the sharpest and most educated minds.

Such is the case with former Temasek climate strategist Neo Gim Huay, Mandai Nature’s immediate past chief executive officer Kavita Prakash-Mani, and Filipino-American journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maria Ressa.

They are among those offered positions on multinational companies’ sustainability advisory panels, where they are encouraged to air their concerns to board members and top management in meetings typically scheduled two to four times a year.

Neo is on Nestle’s panel, while Prakash-Mani is on Unilever’s, and Ressa is on AXA’s. The idea is to have them scan the horizon for environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues that may trip up or possibly blindside the companies.

Greg Brittian, the Asia-Pacific head of sustainable business at sustainability recruitment firm Acre, said that such panels are not new, but their function has evolved as companies place greater emphasis on implementation.

The headhunter, involved in helping companies identify the right personnel for such panels, said specialists with a strong grasp of regional dynamics are increasingly in demand as corporations hunker down on cleaning up their supply chains.

Picking up regional blind spots

The hot property right now, Brittian said, are folks who can advise on topics such as sustainable logistics, shipping, packaging, and materials – in this part of the world, in particular.

“We’ve seen what’s happened recently with disruptions to the supply chain causing ripple effects globally… There is a hotspot in this region for those supply chains to exist, and (to fix) the challenges around those.”

There’s a demand for people who understand not just the ground issues where these supply chains start in, but also the logistics beyond them – covering the afterlife of products as well, he said. 

This comes as themes such as extended producer responsibility and human rights due diligence make their way onto the sustainability agenda. 

Within the consumer goods industry, buzzwords such as “cradle to gate”, which covers just the partial product life cycle from resource extraction to the factory gate, have evolved to “cradle to grave”, covering the disposal phase, Brittian noted.

And, while such panels are still rare among Singapore-based companies, a few are in “early-stage” talks with Acre – which recently set up shop here – to form one, its Asia-Pacific head of sustainable business lets on.

Part of the draw is how economical the solution is, he said – with a board of 10 high-level people meeting four times a year being drastically cheaper than having them on full-time contracts.

Increasingly indispensable

Some might wonder why such panels are needed, when many large entities listed on the Singapore Exchange have already installed a chief sustainability officer (CSO). 

Brittian said they play complementary roles: CSOs devise the strategy that transforms a business into becoming sustainability-driven, while panels act as an “ongoing feedback mechanism” to keep those strategies in check.

“The panels are an additional layer of comfort and perspective to assess strategy, to find risks, to try and embrace the strengths within that strategy. It’s essentially a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis,” he said. 

With a panel in place, transformation strategies are likely to go through both the board and said panel before they are implemented, he added. 

Hence, they are becoming increasingly indispensable, with horizon-scanning being seen as key in helping companies cope with growing disruption. 

“If you don’t know what is coming up, you are not creating plans and initiatives to deal with that. When it suddenly pops up that you’ve got a new reporting requirement across a business that is multinational, it becomes very complicated (then) to try and figure that out.”

A place for activists?

Given their function, it also may not be long before these panels look to once-shunned activists as possible candidates.

Brittian said he would not write that off, pointing to a recent example involving Thai Union, one of the world’s biggest tuna producers, and one of its harshest critics – the independent campaigning organisation Greenpeace. 

He said their relationship changed gradually but entirely throughout the years – through communication, understanding, and working together – such that they are now partnering each other on projects to make tuna fishing sustainable.

“That is a systemic, sustainable transformation. That happened probably because it got so bad that the business was feeling the pinch, but that shift is an example of where activism and sustainability working very closely together created incredible results,” he said.

This does not mean that companies should view these panels as a way of dealing with dissenting opinions. Brittian said that, even with the most effective panels, “you are not going to please everyone”.

“But if you can, get as many perspectives onto the table, and make an educated decision on the next steps. It’s a whole lot better than having three people just saying yes to everything,” he contends.

*Amendment note: An earlier version of this story misspelt the name of the sustainability recruitment firm. It should be Acre, not Acres. The article has been revised to reflect this.