NEW DELHI: Amid economic uncertainties and volatility in the markets, India Inc is giving increasing attention to sustainability issues and investing heavily in building proper infrastructure for it, a survey has revealed.

Over 70 percent of the respondents have a well-defined strategy or policy related to sustainability, according to a survey conducted by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) in association with Ernst & Young.

Visions of the top managements have been the most significant driver of sustainability in India. Over 65 percent of the surveyed companies reported that they have a primary responsibility centre for sustainability that reports to senior management.

The report, titled ‘Leveraging Value: Corporate Response to Sustainability Challenge’, covers the sustainability journey of some of India’s largest companies and attempts to understand how the sustainability challenge is impacting their businesses.

The sample for the survey included about 60 companies that have identified their sustainability challenges and are at various stages of graduating to become sustainable enterprises.

The survey notes that corporate India is fast catching up with the highly progressive trends in sustainability that have been witnessed across the developed countries. The government’s regulations in this regard would give a further boost to sustainable enterprise, FICCI said in a statement.

However, the report highlights that there is significant scope for Indian industry to put the required sustainability infrastructure in place since most companies tend to consider discrete elements such as environment, social responsibility or health and safety as being equivalent to sustainability.

“This indicates that there is a gap in the understanding of the holistic components of sustainability,” FICCI said.

While 90 percent of the companies reportedly assess their sustainability-related risk, only half have a formal mechanism to assess these risks, according to the survey.

(IANS)

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