Impact Management Platform launched to improve clarity on sustainability impacts

London, UK, 17 November – Leading international providers of sustainability standards and guidance have come together to create the Impact Management Platform, a collaboration to mainstream the practice of impact management. As a first product, the ‘Platform’, whose steering committee brings together a set of multilateral organisations, has launched a web tool that outlines the core actions of impact management and links to the resources to help organisations and investors implement them.

Over the past decade, there has been significant growth in demand for organisations to improve their impacts on people and the planet, and to contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Core to making this possible is effective impact management. However, the growing number of initiatives supporting different aspects of impact management have been difficult for enterprises and investors to navigate. With the climate crisis and COVID- 19 pandemic demonstrating the fundamental interdependencies between markets and sustainability issues, the urgency to build a coherent and complete system of principles, standards and guidance for how to improve sustainability impacts has never been greater.

Through the Platform, partnering organisations will work together to identify opportunities to consolidate existing sustainability resources, collectively address gaps, and coordinate with policymakers and regulators to support the mainstreaming of impact management. This effort represents the next phase of a global collaboration that, until now, was facilitated by the Impact Management Project (IMP), a five-year consensus-building forum designed to run until 2021. Earlier work included facilitating sustainability disclosure initiatives to agree a shared vision for corporate reporting to meet the needs of all stakeholders, and supporting the consolidation of the investor-focused disclosure initiatives into the IFRS Foundation and its new International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB). The Platform, whose Steering Committee includes multilateral organisations that will also advise the ISSB, provides a complementary forum for the broader task of supporting practitioners to manage their sustainability impacts.

Partners planning to work together through the Platform include B Lab, Capitals Coalition, CDP, Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB), Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Global Steering Group for Impact Investment (GSG), International Finance Corporation (IFC), Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative at Harvard Business School (IWAI), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), Value Reporting Foundation, Social Value International, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), UN Development Programme (UNDP), UN Environment Programme - Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), UN Global Compact (UNGC) and World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA).

A joint launch webinar at 10am EDT / 3pm GMT / 4pm CET on Tuesday 23 November will share the vision and future of the Platform with representatives of the Platform Partners. This will include a keynote dialogue with Mathias Cormann, Secretary General of the OECD, and Inger Andersen, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme.