Cosimi urges companies to start treating sustainability as business enabler

The time has come for corporate sustainability to be seen as a positive business enabler rather than an issue that applies the brakes, president of Anra, Carlo Cosimi, told delegates in his opening speech at the Italian risk and insurance management association’s annual conference in Milan today.

Cosimi, who is head of group risk and insurance at Italian multinational engineering group Maire Tecnimont, told his members that corporate identity and sustainability must become inseparable as the world moves forward on a number of ESG issues.

He began his conference address with a quote from the philosopher Immanuel Kant, who said: “The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that her flight would be still easier in empty space.” But as Kant made clear, a dove cannot support itself in flight without the resistance of air.

Cosimi believes that this metaphor works in today’s modern business world. A company, or dove, needs the air, or sustainability, to advance and compete successfully, he said, at the conference taking place under the theme ‘Sustainable sustainability: The challenge for risk management’.

“That very air that the dove feels as a restraint, a burden, Kant reminds us is necessary for its own flight, without which it would not rise from the ground. Sustainability, therefore, should no longer be perceived as a brake and resistance but as a lever for movement and advancement,” said Anra’s president.

He said Kant did not offer advice on the direction the dove should travel. But he believes that a company’s strategic vision, which incorporates objectives and risk, can help ensure a safe path towards sustainability.

This vision should help make the “flight as safe as possible… a planned flight in which the objectives can be maximised while the risks can be controlled as much as possible”, said Cosimi.

“Sustainability, therefore, is no longer a matter of actions required by regulations or mere communication and marketing strategies, but a continuous search for a sustainable posture, in which identity and sustainability are inseparable in the same corporate DNA,” he said.

“This is why for our XXIII conference we thought it appropriate to focus on our reflections, discussion and analyses on the importance of air to be able to soar and therefore how sustainability can help mark the winning routes to follow for our companies,” he continued.

Cosimi said it is key to define the dove’s course, or a company’s view of its risks and opportunities, and how all stakeholders – from shareholders, to customers, to supplies, to controllers – can benefit from the journey.

“To this question, and many others, we will seek answers in our two days of work” at the Anra conference, he concluded.

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