Press Room

News / Feb 03, 2021

The Case for Sustainable Accounting Standards

EU Presidency: Informal Meeting of Ministers Responsible for Research

EU Presidency: Informal Meeting of Ministers Responsible for Research | Hovione

 

3 FEBRUARY 2021 - Belem Cultural Centre - CCB, LISBON - (online event)

 

The Case for Sustainable Accounting Standards

When the planet faces big issues, scientists are the first to flag them, the first to understand them, the first to design solutions – sadly science is seldom at the table when business decisions are taken.

When the issues are simple, such as the ozone hole above Antarctica, scientists can get decision-makers to understand and act and we have Science to thank for the Montreal protocol: 20 years elapsed from discovery to inverting the trend – this speed is possible when the problem is simple: a single chemical reaction -ozone and chlorine- and a single culprit – man-made CFC gases. Climate change is very complex, there are multiple causes, the magnitude of change needed is massive and therefore cannot be solved without a transversal approach.

Scientists are not able to influence decision-making because they do not speak the language of business. Companies, CEOs, asset managers, shareholders, funds march to the tune of profitability, their language is that of financial performance – today’s accounting standards ignore externalities and measure business profit not accounting for the good and the bad impacts of business on society and on the environment.

Sustainable accounting standards that measure profitability adjusted for social and environmental impact is the necessary new common language if we are to ensure scientists, business and other stakeholders understand each-other. If we do not measure, we cannot manage. CFOs don’t know what is a mole of a newton, as much as most people in this room might not know what is EBITDA or an impairment. We must measure unambiguously the true and complete value of business. This measure of value added corrected for sustainability can connect to a measure of sustainable GDP of a city or of a country, which in turn can connect with the value of the world's ecosystem services and natural capital. Tracking this performance over time will allow to assess the trajectory of the health of our planet.
Sustainable accounting standards will drive business to hire new skills. Finance and controlling areas will recruit scientists, engineers, anthropologists, sociologists... Over time the Chief Financial Officer will see its role evolving to that of a Chief Value Officer.

If business adopts sustainable accounting standards, executives and shareholders will know the complete extent of their impact and the liabilities they face from exposure to climate change. No one can then plead ignorance. Taxation can take into account social benefits and environmental costs thereby driving desired behaviors. No amount of Science Based targets and Mission Oriented R&D projects can ever come close to the impact on Climate Change that Business harnessed by the right accounting standards can deliver by doing its day-to-day work in a manner that considers the people and the planet. Sustainable accounting standards will allow the market forces to drive decisions in the right direction.

Putting a man on the moon by the decade’s end, may be more inspiring than making every company in the EU to comply with Sustainable Accounting Standards. This may come across as a small step for the EU Commission to take, but it would be a giant leap for the planet.

How could Horizon Europe spur the innovations necessary not only to embrace sustainable accounting practices, but also make it possible for economic, business and investment actors to evolve the underlying logic of market capitalism to value natural, social and human capital on par with financial? Could the EU lead the world in this evolution during next 10 years?”

 

Guy Villax
Lisbon, 3rd February 2021

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Find more about this virtual event at 2021portugal.eu

 

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Continuous Tableting (CT) is defined as continuous manufacturing of oral dose drugs, specifically tablets. As per ICH's Q13 definition1, a continuous manufacturing process in the pharmaceutical industry comprises at least two unit operations integrated from a mechanical and software perspective. There is a wide combination of possible CT process configurations that are dependent on the needs of the intended product formulation and each of the individual unit operations that constitute the process train can be continuous, semi-continuous, or batch processes. The typical manufacturing processes for tablet formulation are direct compression (DC), dry granulation (DG) and wet granulation (WG)2 - details on these manufacturing processes are beyond the scope of this article, so the interested reader is directed to relevant literature. The actual implementation of CT technology in a facility can broadly vary depending on the level of desired integration and automation. Process trains can be designed to be flexible and converted between multiple configurations (e.g. continuous DC, DG and WG), controlled by the end user from one single software and within a single clean room. The other possibility would be for subsections of the CT process to be divided into multiple clean rooms where inprocess materials are transferred between suites via a bin-to-bin approach (e.g. a granulation suite to prepare granules from raw materials followed by continuous DC (CDC) to blend the granules and produce tablets). The level of automation and instrumentation designed into the CT process (typically involving Process Analytical Technologies, PAT) can open the possibility to implement sophisticated control strategies. Key components of a control strategy that need to be considered for CT are material tracking and genealogy, knowledge of the residence time distribution (RTD), and in-process controls (spectroscopic and/or soft sensors based on process parameters). Holistically, these control strategy elements enable the implementation of a material diversion strategy to automatically divert out of specification material from the process. In their most advanced form, control strategies may also enable real time release testing (RTRt) of the final tablet drug product and reduce the off-line analytical burden and the number of operators needed to manage the process.   Read the full article at gmp-journal.com  

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