XVI National Congress

October 06, 2021

From 5 to 6 October 2021, the 16th National Congress was held at the Digital Leadership Center, Moscow. The organizers of the Congress were ANO Initiative and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation. This year, the main theme of the National Congress-2021 was „Comprehensive modernization of industries.“

As part of the session „Environmental responsibility of business“, speakers discussed the economic and reputational benefits of environmentally responsible business, the principles of the ESG agenda, promising eco-projects for SMEs, the tasks of reducing the carbon footprint in industry and many others.

The session was moderated by Dmitry Fedorov, director of ANO „Green Civilization“, head of regional development of the interregional environmental public organization „ECA“.

Within the framework of the session, a report was made by the UNIDO CIIC in the Russian Federation on the topic “Environmental responsibility of business as part of the strategy for achieving the SDGs”. Thus, it was noted that one of the activities of UNIDO is to support Impact Investing as part of a social and environmentally responsible business. Impact investing is carried out in companies, organizations and foundations with the aim of creating measurable, socially or environmentally beneficial impacts, as well as to obtain financial returns.

In addition, the participants discussed the topic of environmental investments of the state budget. On the one hand, the government pays attention to the solution of many environmental problems, financing projects at the federal, interregional and ministerial levels. However, in order to achieve ambitious goals, it is also necessary to attract private investment.

The Russian Ecological Society quotes its executive director Yulia Filatkina:

“Non-commercial projects in the field of ecology and sustainable development for business are always about money. Individual managers and shareholders of the company may be personally interested in one or another environmental agenda (climate change, separate waste collection, protection of the Red Book animals, etc.), but the company’s strategy as a whole is always aimed at increasing profits, economic growth, entering new markets. Therefore, when choosing a non-commercial project, the business is guided by how support for this project will help it to solve these problems.”