Charlton College of Business Professor Adam Sulkowski to Present at UN Climate Summit November 20 in Poland, Collaboration with Students on Local Projects in Massachusetts Contributed to Expertise on Environmental Impact Reporting
UMass Dartmouth's Charlton College of Business Associate Professor Adam Sulkowski will speak on November 20 at the 2013 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Warsaw, Poland. Several years of collaborating with UMass Dartmouth students on sustainability reports for their campus, the Town of Dartmouth and City of Fall River, and subsequent groundbreaking work with one of the largest cities in Europe contributed to knowledge of best practices that will be discussed. Students were also invited to help with background research on other best practices around the world.
"I join the entire UMass Dartmouth community in congratulating Professor Sulkowski," said A. "Guna" Gunasekaran, Dean of UMass Dartmouth's Charlton College of Business. "The impacts of climate change present global issues that require global awareness and local action. Through a commitment to sustainability and ambitious research, UMass Dartmouth faculty and students hope to play a role in that effort."
As a professor of business law and sustainable development at UMass Dartmouth, Professor Sulkowski specializes in research and teaching in the fields of sustainable business and corporate law. He has authored over 30 publications and researched and lectured in Brazil, China, India, Japan, Kenya, Pakistan, Poland, and Russia, among other countries. He received his JD and MBA from Boston College and BA from the College of William & Mary.
The specific topic Professor Sulkowski has been asked to highlight and explain is the importance of measurement and reporting environmental impact data, which evidence proves is valuable in various contexts related to reducing pollution and making organizations and cities more efficient.
"An essential factor in managing any issue is the ability to measure it," said Professor Sulkowski. "The goals and best practices to be promoted and implemented relative to emission reductions matter, but developing the practice of measurement and tracking are equally vital and are an essential first step toward achieving them."
Professor Sulkowski also worked with the City of Warsaw to make it the first entity in the world to have published a sustainability report using the latest version of the guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the world's predominant standard (the report is available at: http://www.um.warszawa.pl/en/business-and-investments/article-business-and-investments/warsaw-integrated-sustainability-report). This collaborative effort with the capital city of Poland and one of the largest cities in the European Union (EU) followed his contributions in the creation of the first GRI-guided sustainability reports for cities in the United States. Given that the majority of the planet's people now live in cities, both city and subnational governments will be included as focal points of consultation and action.
In fall 2012, students from Professor Sulkowski's MBA class (Business Law, Corporate Responsibility, and Sustainability) and members of the UMass Dartmouth Chapter of Net Impact generated not only an updated sustainability report for the university, but also reports for two local municipalities: Fall River was the first GRI-guided sustainability report in the country to have been completed by a city and Dartmouth's report was the first by a town in the U.S. to be guided by the same standard. The reports for UMass Dartmouth and these two local municipalities are available at http://netimpact.umassd.edu/. More recently, the Town of Dartmouth leadership discussed and approved repeating the sustainability reporting exercise on an annual basis as a means of improving efficiency and decision-making.
194 countries will be represented in Warsaw at the COP19 Climate Change Conference from November 11-22, a key aspect of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Links to Professor Sulkowski's research and commentary about the COP-19 conference are available at http://adamsulkowski.com/.