Committed to eradicating extreme poverty and supporting shared, sustainable prosperity across the globe, the World Bank takes action to advance UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). At the same time, the World Bank adopts, in its sustainability reporting, the GRI-G4 guidelines and identifies its most important sustainability issues based on GRI-G4 aspect categories. Examples of such action include:

• The World Bank takes action to measure, manage and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, maximize its energy and water efficiency and promote sustainability in its supply chain. These priorities relate to SDG 12 (“Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns”) and to a number of GRI-G4 indicators (for example, G4-EN3, G4-EN5, G4-EN6, G4-EN15, G4-EN19, G4-EN32).

• The World Bank strives to combat climate change by reducing emissions – in 2015, the World Bank reduced its emissions by 5,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) –, implementing energy efficiency improvements at its offices globally and reducing electricity consumption at its headquarters. These goals are in line with SDG 13 (“Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”) and several GRI-G4 indicators (for example, G4-EN6, G4-EN15, G4-EN16, G4-EN17, G4-EN18, G4-EN19).

• Promoting gender equality in the workplace, the World Bank achieved “EDGE Assess” certification for its headquarters in Washington, DC (Economic Dividends for Gender Equality, or EDGE, is the leading global standard for gender equality at work). This target corresponds to SDG 5 (“Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”) and GRI-G4 indicators G4-LA12 and G4-LA13.

• The World Bank created the Open Learning Campus (OLC), offering employees, clients and partners further education opportunities. This initiative is related to SDG 4 (“Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning”) and GRI-G4 indicators G4-LA9 and G4-LA10.

References:

This article was compiled using information published at the links below. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses but made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the publication’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original please revert to the links below:

https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/committed-sustainability-five-world-bank-corporate-actions-support-sdgs

http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/25110/108335.pdf

http://www.worldbank.org/en/about/annual-report

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/22723

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