Call on Everyone: Signed Leaders’ Declaration for a Just and Sustainable Future

The Covid-19 crisis has created an urgent need for a just, impact-led recovery that serves all people and preserves our planet. At the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment 2020 Impact Summit, our Sanja Zivkovic signed the Leaders’ Declaration for a Just and Sustainable Future on behalf of Co-Impact Foundation, addressed to G7 and G20 Leaders, Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors.

To save billions of people from greater hardship, it is urgent that we bring impact to the heart of our economies and put the following into action:

1. Scale impact investment to combat unemployment, reduce inequality and preserve the environment
Introduce incentives to accelerate impact investment, which seeks social as well as financial returns in order to create sustainable jobs, advance education, improve healthcare, and fund the expansion of non-profit organizations that support the most vulnerable.
Spur investment into small and medium-sized impact-driven businesses and high-growth impact ventures in developed and developing countries, to create millions of new jobs. Since many large companies are streamlining their operations and eliminating jobs, impact growth ventures and SMEs provide the best route to creating new jobs and supporting the recovery.

2. Mandate impact transparency for companies
Establish impact transparency by mandating that companies publish audited financial accounts that reflect their social and environmental impacts. This will provide ESG investors and consumers with the transparency they need to hold businesses accountable for the harm they cause and reward them for the positive impact they create.

3. Introduce legislation to empower companies and investors to pursue impact
Shift our economies away from profit alone to profit and impact. Amend legislation and regulations to allow companies, pension funds and charitable endowments to base their decisions on return and impact.

Co-Impact Foundation supports implementation of these measures and pave the way to a fairer and more sustainable world. We call on everyone – governments, citizens, consumers, investors, companies and philanthropists – take action to help achieve a just and impact-led recovery, by signing the Declaration here.