Dear Members and Friends,

Sustainability is the future of business. People are becoming much more concerned with sustainable business practices. I was informed that Millennials are known for being extremely interested in social good - and they reportedly would pay 10-25% more for a sustainable product.

Generation Z also follows this trend towards more sustainable living. Their top priority is to tackle climate change and 81% of them believe that businesses need to contribute towards this.

Seeing as both generations are set to become the majority workers and consumers in the future, businesses must quickly understand their attitudes towards sustainability.

Reliable research by Oxford University and others confirms that good sustainability and ESG practices correlate with lower operating costs, better profitability, and superior share price performance.

It has been shown that companies that best manage their environmental and social impact and have better governance practices are more profitable in the medium to long term. There are numerous studies on this topic conducted by academics and financial analysts. A recent global survey revealed that 75% of senior executives in investment firms agree that a company’s sustainability performance is materially important to their investment decisions, and nearly 50% would not invest in a company with a poor sustainability track record. Many countries in the Asia-Pacific, including Malaysia are catching up with this trend.

The BCSD Malaysia, the newest chapter of the WBCSD in the Asia-Pacific, is ready, willing, and able to play the “honest broker” role in meeting the sustainability aspirations of companies in this country.

Come, join us in this noble endeavor!

Dear Members and Friends,

The last few months have been extremely fruitful and important for BCSD Malaysia, albeit the COVID-19 pandemic's pain and restrictions that are affecting everyone’s lives.

We finalized the setup of the organization and established all the necessary operational and governance processes that allow us to run a well-functioning non-profit organization.

We also have spent considerable time engaging with many of you to find out what are the priority areas for business and sustainability in Malaysia.

We have come up with a priority list and a number of ideas that we are now transforming into projects with precise objectives, strategies and deliverables. Hopefully we will be able to start-up some of them very soon with the help and support of our members and stakeholders.

The areas of interventions we have identified include plastics recycling and circular economy, biodiversity preservation, energy transition and net-zero GHG emissions, green financing, urban mobility and human rights.

Meanwhile, we have run cutting edge events on human rights, enterprise risk management and ESG, the energy transition, biodiversity and ecosystem services.

We have big ambitions. We have capable people and we can count on loads of knowledge and expertise made available to us through our affiliation with WBCSD and its Global Network. Now we need more companies committed to work together towards sustainability; committed to ensure that systemic transformation happens in support of the SDGs and on a pathway to a world in which over nine billion people are expected to live well, within the boundaries of the planet by mid-century. We need you!