Engaging SASB: Civil Society Call to Action

The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) stands out among other sustainability reporting frameworks for its ability to define standards of financial materiality that will require firms to disclose business risks, which will in turn affect the decisions of investors and, through publicity, the decisions of consumers, business partners, and other corporate stakeholders as well. Since the publication of the standards in November 2018, there is growing evidence of public company willingness to disclose according to SASB, in large part because large investment advisors are demanding that they do so. These developments point to SASB as a new means for civil society to hold corporations accountable for human rights.

During this webinar, we will introduce the SASB standard, explain why it is growing in importance as a tool for corporate responsibility, and the advocacy opportunities it presents for corporate accountability and labor rights advocates. Rights CoLab will also introduce its new project to support SASB’s Human Capital Management Project, and provide information about how to get involved.

Speakers:
Paul Rissman, CoFounder, Rights CoLab
Delilah Rothenberg, Executive Director, Pre-Distribution Initiative
Hugues LeTourneau, Manager, Global Unions Committee on Workers’ Capital
David Parham, Director of Research, SASB
Kelli Okuji-Wilson, Project Lead, Human Capital Management Project, SASB
Joanne Bauer, CoFounder, Rights CoLab (moderator)

Background reading:
- Our four-part blog series on Moving the Market to Support Human Rights https://rightscolab.org/moving-the-market-to-support-human-rights-a-four-part-series-on-sasb-and-corporate-accountability/
- Paul Rissman and Diana Kearny, Rise of the Shadow ESG Regulators: Investment Advisers, Sustainability Accounting, and Their Effects on Corporate Social Responsibility, Feb 2019. https://rightscolab.org/how-to-tame-a-money-manager/

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