Редакция журнала «Позитивные изменения» – Позитивные изменения. Том 4, №1 (2024). Positive changes. Volume 4, Issue 1 (2024) (страница 8)
5. На этапе планирования деятельности указывается планируемый план мероприятий и их результатов, а также индикаторов, позволяющих делать вывод о достижении/не достижении планируемых изменений.
6. Для каждого проекта или программы, реализуемых в рамках достижения устойчивого развития, должна быть разработана модель оценки, предполагающая систему мониторинга и оценки достигаемых изменений, в соответствии с системой индикаторов.
7. Для каждого проекта или программы, реализуемых в рамках достижения устойчивого развития, рекомендуется провести расчет индекса доказательности и обоснованности.
8. Разработка и реализация модели оценки воздействия проекта/программы устойчивого развития, отражающей достигаемые (достигнутые) ею изменения, может осуществляться организацией самостоятельно либо с привлечением исследовательских и иных профильных компаний, научных организаций, в том числе на базе научно-исследовательских университетов.
Представленные рекомендации не ограничены конкретным разрабатываемым на федеральном уровне документом, – скорее, их можно и нужно считать применимыми в режиме реального времени и для любой корпорации уже сейчас. Что, безусловно, не отменяет их логичности для включения в национальный Стандарт отчетности.
Закончить обзор хочется данными опроса за ноябрь 2023 года от рейтингового агентства «Эксперт РА», согласно которому почти 80 % нефинансовых и 60 % финансовых компаний будут готовить отчет об устойчивом развитии по итогам года[15]. Эту тенденцию замечают и поддерживают и государственные органы. И важно, чтобы в эту работу включались все больше лидеров социальных изменений.
Following Your Own Course. Development of the Russian Sustainable Development Reporting Standard and its Prospects
Tatiana Pechegina, Vladimir Vainer
DOI 10.55140/2782-5817-2024-4-1-10-25
At present, there are several initiatives in Russia aimed at organizing, stimulating, and developing the concept of sustainable development. The principal approach is the domestically developed Standard for Sustainable Development Reporting (a draft of which the editorial board got access to), which is being created at the request of the Russian Ministry of Economic Development and Trade. Positive Changes Journal has compiled an in-depth analysis of this document, encompassing the perspectives of all interested parties. Being unaffiliated with any of these groups, yet possessing all necessary information, we can afford to examine the situation from an objective standpoint, analyze it, and propose pertinent contributions to the standard in development.
Tatiana Pechegina
Vladimir Vainer
The sustainability of the social sphere, particularly its economic constituents like social enterprises and non-governmental organization, is intrinsically linked to the position and sustainability of businesses, whether large or small. The more sustainable the business, the more effectively it bolsters the development of the entire social sector. Well-being represents a broad spectrum of factors that encompass addressing social challenges from the global scale down to the local level of individual lives and their families.
Traditionally, social initiatives rely on what is termed “corporate social responsibility”: through philanthropy and patronage, sponsorship, social investments, and innovative social entrepreneurship projects. However, in recent years, the familiar acronym “CSR” is progressively being supplanted by the abbreviation “SDG,” representing the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals and their respective national applications.[16]
The recognition that all major businesses should embrace CSR has evolved into a strategic pursuit of sustainable development goals, subsequently forming an ESG agenda, which dictates that businesses meet developmental criteria across three domains: environmental, social, and governance. ESG serves as a financial mechanism to incentivize and quantify the SDGs. These mechanisms include preferential terms for lending, bonds and other forms of borrowing within the global financial system and national finance frameworks. In Russia, this particularly refers to the “green” and “social” taxonomies. Furthermore, the Bank of Russia has formulated recommendations for developing a methodology and assigning ESG ratings.[17]
The National ESG Alliance was also established, with a mission to “fortify the national sustainable development agenda in Russia by uniting the efforts of large-scale business and the government.”[18] In 2022, the Alliance launched the ESG Ecosystem Atlas, which features over 30 sections detailing the roles of regulators, standards and taxonomy developers, data aggregators, and professional users of non-financial data, as well as creators of services and authors involved in diverse projects in this domain. Simultaneously, it is envisaged to considerably scale up the national ESG agenda within Russia, incorporating not just prominent ESG transformation leaders but also small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as the society at large, by 2030, which is beyond the immediate horizon.
Discussing ESG indicators, it is crucial to understand the stance of the state. In 2021, the Russian President expressed his viewpoint as follows: “ESG is a comprehensive gauge of how a state envisions its progression for the near future and beyond into the medium and long term. Undoubtedly, such development must place the individual at its core, which is what it does. The Russian government fully recognizes this, not merely to keep to the trend but because our entire policy is founded around the individual. At least that’s what we are certainly striving to do.”[19]
In 2022, Vladimir Putin, after convening with members of the Business Russia organization, directed the Russian Government to “explore defining criteria for classifying investment projects in line with the standards of environmental, social, and governance responsibility (ESG), and to consider state support for such project participants.”[20]
In 2023, the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation conducted an evaluation of the UN SDGs ratified by Russia in its 85 regions and acknowledged positive trends in the majority of indicators.[21] Yet, the actual understanding of SDGs within the regions, as well as public awareness of the topic, remains at a modest level, with the implementation by local authorities being highly contingent upon regional specificity and the engagement of senior officials.
Based on a 2023 study by hh.ru and the ecological service “Save the Forest,” it appears that the majority of Russia’s economic sectors have decreased the salaries of ESG specialists and scaled back their recruitment.[22]
The reality is, despite the ratification of UN SDGs by Russia, the national ESG agenda as a basis for financial stability – upon which large investments were forecasted and decisions for significant international financial dealings were made – has seen substantial shifts over the past couple of years. Consequently, the nation’s leading figures have repeatedly emphasized the necessity of creating a bespoke, local ESG agenda.
By mid-2023, Russia had established the conditions necessary for reevaluating and forming a novel concept, one that would naturally incorporate a human-centered, social agenda addressing the development of transparency and engagement with society, inclusivity, support of volunteer and other civic initiatives, and the overall contribution to and assessment of positive social changes. This approach rests on a broader comprehension of sustainable development, not restricted to a narrow set of ESG benchmarks. Let us now consider a number of recent initiatives that have been introduced, fostering the development of the ESG discourse in Russia.
In November 2023, the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation published the document “On Approval of Methodological Recommendations for the Preparation of Sustainable Development Reporting.”[23] It refers to that very Reporting Standard that, at the moment of publishing, was still in the phase of development.
At the WeAreTogether forum during the “Russia” exhibition in December 2023, experts discussed this approach, suggesting significant refinements for the forthcoming iteration of the standard. This discussion was held within the framework of the strategic session titled “Sustainability Reporting Standard as a tool for fostering volunteerism and social engagement among residents, businesses, and territories.”[24]