The Impact Management Platform launches new consensus view of the actions and fundamental characteristics of impact management

 Reproduced from UNEP Finance Initiative web site here

Recent years have seen accelerated uptake of sustainability-related standards and practices. Enterprises, investors and financial institutions are increasingly paying attention to their sustainability-related risks, and are managing some of their impacts in the process. Despite this, the management of private sector impacts on people and the natural environment continues to be done in a fragmented, narrow and short-sighted way, if at all.

Recognising the need for change, the Partners of the Impact Management Platform have advanced their agenda to clarify and build consensus on the practice of impact management. Eighteen months after agreeing to work together via the Platform, the Partners have released a set of new outputs, including:

• A thought piece clarifying the imperative for impact management and the relationship between impacts, system-wide risk and materiality, arguing that impact management is not only a human and environmental imperative, but is also critical to sustaining economic and financial performance of the market as a whole. Find out more here.
• An explanation of the core management actions that allow for impact management, and what they mean across the value chain. Find out more here.
• An explanation of the key terms and concepts related to impact management, which reflect the Partners’ consensus on the definitions. Find out more here.

These materials are the result of a thorough consensus-building effort by the Partners, who anticipate that these outputs will advance the interoperability of their own resources, and further progress the consolidation of a coherent and complete set of resources for practitioners.