CII-ITC Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Development is a not-for-profit, industry-led institution that helps business become sustainable organisations. It is on a mission to catalyse innovative ideas and solutions, in India, and globally, to enable business, and its stakeholders, in sustainable value creation. It’s knowledge, action and recognition activities enable companies to be future ready, improve footprints profiles, and advocate policymakers and legislators to improve standards of sustainable business through domestic and global policy interventions.

CESD leverages its role of all-inclusive ecosystem player, partnering industry, government, and civil society. It has been a pioneer of environment management systems, biodiversity mapping, sustainability reporting, integrated reporting, and social & natural capital valuation in India, thus upgrading business in India to sustainable competitiveness.

With three locations in India, CESD operates across the country and has also been active in parts of South and South East Asia, Middle East, and Africa. It has held institutional partnerships and memberships of the United Nations Global Compact, Global Reporting Initiative, International Integrated Reporting Council, Carbon Disclosure Project, development agencies of Canada, the USA, the UK, and Germany.The environment is suffering as are the people. In light of this, sustainability has become a major concern for businesses. It pressurizes them to adapt accordingly so that their practices meet the need of the changing environment.

That's where they come in. They nurture companies to compete, expand opportunity and excel in today’s dynamic business environments.

Mission

To catalyse innovative ideas and solutions, in India, and globally, to enable business, and its stakeholders, in sustainable value creation.

Vision

Be a global leader, in thought and action, to drive transformation, towards sustainable development.

History

On the eve of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) [also known as the Earth Summit or Rio Summit] in June 1992, a new global organisation - Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD) - was founded to involve business in sustainable development issues.

A similar and parallel movement emerged in India at the very same time as the BCSD. In 1991, Ratan Tata of the Tata Group of Companies, a leading corporate conglomerate in India, was selected to represent India, China and SouthEast Asia in the BCSD. Being a past president of the leading industry association, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), known as Confederation of Engineering Industry (CEI) at that time, Ratan Tata urged the industry association to organise a regional conference “Changing Course towards Sustainable Development”. Recognising the importance of this emerging discipline, the then Director-General, Tarun Das, willingly accepted this responsibility. The regional initiative was lead by Avininder Singh, Chairman, CII National Environment Committee. Eminent global, regional and national personalities participated in this milestone conference. This included Maurice Strong, Chairman of the Earth Summit, Stephan Schmidheiny, Founder of the BCSD and author of Changing Course, Hugh Faulkner, a former Canadian politician, industrialist & co-founder of BCSD, and Ratan Tata. Through this conference, Indian industry leaders made a strong commitment and a solid intellectual foundation was laid to what is today the CII-ITC Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Development (CII-ITC CESD).