Climate protection, biodiversity and social responsibility are no longer a question of personal idealism, but strategic tasks for management and supervisory boards.
Professional sustainability risk management requires new knowledge
Since the Paris Climate Agreement, the EU has stepped up the pace towards a sustainable economy. The EU Action Plan and the Green Deal aim to make Europe climate-neutral by 2050. This also presents companies with huge challenges, as the new regulatory requirements include the consideration of climate risks, stipulate social and societal responsibility and demand uniform standards, transparency and comparability.
With its Green Deal, the EU has cast the idea of “honorable merchants” into an overall regulatory concept that will deliver measurable results in the future. This will make sustainable activities comparable across borders for the first time. The new transparency discloses the contribution companies make to the well-being of their employees, the environment and society.
In the future, companies will no longer be assessed solely on the basis of financial criteria such as liquidity and profitability, but also on how they deal with the issues of climate and environmental protection, biodiversity and their social and societal responsibility. This professional sustainability risk management requires new knowledge at all hierarchical levels and the entrepreneurial vision to actively shape the challenges ahead.
Sustainability is becoming a central corporate management factor
The EU Taxonomy provides a standardized classification system for sustainable economic activities. And with non-financial reporting (“CSRD”), clear rules and a new reporting standard (“ESRS”) analogous to financial reporting will be presented. Around 2,000 Austrian companies will be covered by this from 2026.
Although the regulatory requirements are primarily aimed at larger companies, they require comprehensive data along the entire supply chain in order to meet their reporting obligations. This is precisely where smaller companies come into play: as part of a value chain, they are increasingly required to provide non-financial information. This means that in future, all companies, their managers and employees will have to deal with sustainability and the opportunities and risks in their own business model.