Sustainability Hub Norway
  • About
    • US
    • Become a Corporate Partner
    • Our Team
    • Partnership Benefits
    • Partnership >
      • S-HUB Partners
      • S-HUB Member Stories
  • S-HUB Community
    • CFO Sustainability Network
    • The Sustainability Reporting Network
    • The CPO & Supply Chain Sustainability Network
    • Sustainable Food Norway
    • Tech & Sustainability Network (under development)
    • S-CONNECT
    • S-HUB Circles
    • Sustainability Traineeship
  • Events
  • Resources
    • State of Sustainability 2021
    • State of Sustainability 2020
    • State of Sustainability 2019
    • Noteworthy Reports
    • S-HUB Blog, news and stories
  • Job Portal
    • S-HUB Salg- og Markedskonsulent
    • S-HUB Internship

Sustainability insights: Ita Demyttenaere

BLOG BY SUSTAINABILITY HUB NORWAY - 18.04.22

We’ve asked some of our speakers from across the world about sustainability reporting and its challenges, their best sustainability hacks and more. Read on for our fourth interview with Ita Demyttenaere. ​

Picture


Ita is Director in Sustainalytics’ Client Relations team, leading both the Benelux and Nordics Advisory teams that advise Sustainalytics clients their use of Sustainalytics’ products and on integrating ESG considerations into their investment processes. Since joining Sustainalytics in 2014, Ita has worked with several large financial institutions in both regions, across all business lines from asset managers to lending departments. 
​

How can we collectively advance sustainability reporting and sustainable finance? 
“
By doing it. Nevermind that the data is imperfect, it will be for a long time so we cannot wait until everything is sorted out. Once we start reporting, we learn much faster. We can learn from each other, hold each other accountable and be vulnerable.”
 
In your opinion, what is the biggest challenge in sustainability reporting and sustainable finance at the moment?
“ESG is about many different topics, each with its own subthemes. Take the E, Environment, it contains climate change, biodiversity, land use, emissions, effluents and waste. All these subthemes have different variables to measure their success and almost none of them are standardized and reporting by companies is inconsistent at best.
 
Even for the most standardized and advanced datapoint in ESG, carbon intensity, only around 70% of large cap companies report! This makes it incredibly hard to have a holistic view across a broad universe of companies on their ESG performance.”
 
Are there any best practices, industry collaborations, or measurements you would like to highlight?
“
In the Netherlands, Dutch pension funds have signed the IMVB Covenant as an initiative. Collectively, they have agreed to embed the OECD guidelines into their investment processes. This includes identifying and assessing risks of adverse impacts, providing remediation and monitoring and reporting responsibilities. At Sustainalytics, we have a unique position to help clients, but also to observe how this plays out into practice; and we have really seen that Dutch pension funds have raised the bar on what it means to be a responsible investor. This means increased due diligence, stricter exclusion criteria and more engagement and I believe this is exactly what the intention was.”
 
What do you consider as the future of sustainable finance and/or reporting?
“Globally accepted variables on important topics that are standardized and widely reported. This will help investors, and ESG Research providers, to come up with their own view on sustainability that is based on the same source data.”
 
What's your best sustainability hack?
“Cycling as much as possible. It keeps you fit and is environmentally friendly. And in a small city like Amsterdam or Oslo it is often the fastest mode of transportation as well.
”
Tweets by SHub_No
Follow Us                                                 
Quick links                                               
Job Portal
Corporate Member Community
Events
Our Networks                                         
​CFO Sustainability Network
Sustainable Food Norway
S-CONNECT Individual Community

Want to learn more?                               

BECOME A MEMBER
SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER
Contact Us                                                       
info@sustainabilityhub.no

Sustainability Hub Norway
c/o Sentralen - PB 183, 0102 Oslo
  • About
    • US
    • Become a Corporate Partner
    • Our Team
    • Partnership Benefits
    • Partnership >
      • S-HUB Partners
      • S-HUB Member Stories
  • S-HUB Community
    • CFO Sustainability Network
    • The Sustainability Reporting Network
    • The CPO & Supply Chain Sustainability Network
    • Sustainable Food Norway
    • Tech & Sustainability Network (under development)
    • S-CONNECT
    • S-HUB Circles
    • Sustainability Traineeship
  • Events
  • Resources
    • State of Sustainability 2021
    • State of Sustainability 2020
    • State of Sustainability 2019
    • Noteworthy Reports
    • S-HUB Blog, news and stories
  • Job Portal
    • S-HUB Salg- og Markedskonsulent
    • S-HUB Internship