Understanding what's at stake

Critical theme

The importance of meaningful stakeholder reporting was the subject of a presentation by Pavan Sukhdev at the International Institute for Environment and Development.

Pavan Sukhdev makes a Critical Theme presentation to IIED staff (Photo: Matt Wright/IIED)

Sukhdev, the founder and chief executive officer of GIST Advisory, a specialist consulting firm that helps governments and corporations discover, measure, value and manage their impacts on natural and human capital, discussed the relevance of existing stakeholder reporting to the private sector, and explored what other factors might be significant.

His visit was organised as part of a strategic review of environmental economics by IIED, with expert speakers invited to attend a ­­­­series of seminars to challenge thinking on economic issues.

After making a compelling presentation, Sukhdev, also the Special Adviser and Head of the United Nations Environment Programme's Green Economy Initiative, answered questions and engaged in an open forum that encouraged dialogue and debate.

His presentation, Managing externalities; the role of stakeholder reporting, can be viewed below:

Sony Kapoor, the Managing Director of international think tank Re-Define, and Eric Beinhocker, the Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking's research program, have already visited IIED's Gray's Inn Road office this year.

Beinhocker's presentation, Escaping the Malthusian Trap, focused on emerging research that describes the economy as an evolving complex system, and can also be viewed on IIED's Slideshare presence.

Last year, Jesper Stage, Professor of Economics at Mid-Sweden University and a former IIED International Fellow,gave a presentation titled Better indicators than GDP? Yes, but better at what?, and Kate Raworth, Senior Visiting Research Associate with the Environmental Change Unit at Oxford University and a Visiting Fellow in Economics at IIED, presented Rewriting economics for the 21st century.

Watch an interview IIED conducted with its latest Critical Theme presenter, Sukhdev, in July 2010:

Find here more details on the Critical Themes series.