BM&F Bovespa : Sustainability Guide

BM&FBOVESPA has launched the second edition of the 'Novo Valor - Corporate Sustainability: How to begin, who to involve and what to prioritize' Sustainability Guide, in line with international sustainability indicators such as Sustainable Stock Exchanges (SSE)*, the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE), the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and Corporate Knights Capital. The new guide is a evolution of the first edition, published in 2011. Furthermore, in April this year the Exchange published an adaptation of the Novo Valor Guide to encourage private companies to reflect and adopt good sustainability practices in their business.

The Novo Valor Guide, available here, also has a timeline showing the evolution of the sustainable development concept in the business environment, with a recommendation of 13 steps towards sustainability. In addition, the new edition has a preface written by Fiona Reynolds, the Managing Director of the UN's Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) initiative.

The launch of the second edition of the Novo Valor Guide comes in the context of the SSE's ESG Guidance Campaign, which began earlier this year to encourage the world's stock exchanges to create sustainability guides for their listed companies and to promote Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) information transparency in their markets. According to the SSE, this year alone there has been an increase to 15 from 11 exchanges that have sustainability guides, while another 23 stock exchanges have agreed to publish them by the end of 2016.

Global relevance

Given the importance of the transparency of listed companies' sustainability information, Sustainable Stock Exchanges reiterated the importance of the ESG Guidance Campaign this week during the biannual SSE Global Dialogue event in Singapore, which gathered the world's major stock exchanges to discuss sustainability in the capital market.

During the SSE event there was also publication of the Report on Progress in 2016, which highlighted the UN's recognition of BM&FBOVESPA and of its Media Relations, Sustainability and Communications Managing Director Sonia Favaretto as one of the ten 2016 SDG Pioneer s, through BM&FBOVESPA's Socio-Environmental Investment Exchange (BVSA). In addition to this meeting, BM&FBOVESPA also took part in PRI in Person 2016 at the impact roundtable named 'UN Sustainable Development Goals: Aligning Responsible Investment with the broader objectives of society'. This highlighted the goals of the UN Sustainable Development Goals aligned to responsible investment.

* UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the UN Global Compact, the UN Environment Program Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), and the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI).