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How Taiwanese Companies are Responding to the Sustainable Development Goals

By Richard Chen, Manager, Veda International Corporation

Climate change is a global challenge, and financial, supply chain and other related risks derived from climate change are among the top of the list of potential major impact risks. Taiwanese companies, like many global companies around the world, are beginning to realize the severity of the situation. Taiwanese businesses are using the Sustainable Development Goals to help guide progress and business operations for the future.

CSRone Reporting, a leading think-tank in Taiwan, recently published a critical report: “Taiwan CSR Overview and Trends: CSR Report Survey.” The report collected 515 CSR reports, analyzed 505 indicators, over 600,000 data for this annual research. Here are some of the findings:

  1. More than 100 Taiwanese companies have responded to the SDGs.

According to a survey conducted by the CSRone Reporting research team, among the 515 reports compiled in 2017, 143 reports addressed SDGs and disclosed relevant practices. Compared to the 40 reports of the year before, the number grew by more than three times.

In Taiwan, reports that include corporate progress against the SDGs currently account for 28% of the total number of CSR reports. Interestingly, technology companies appear to be the most responsive to the SDGs with the technology industry accounting for 32% of all CSR reports measuring efforts against the SDGs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Among the SDGs targeted by companies and the public, Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production and Goal 13: Climate Action are ranked in the top five. This would suggest that Taiwan attaches significant importance to sustainable environmental awareness.

  1. Taiwanese industry focuses on SDGs, and their goal is paying attention to both climate action and responsible Consumption and Production

Taiwan’s four major industries: Technology, Service, Manufacturing and Financial agree when it comes to prioritizing SDGs. When asked to rank the top five most important SDGs were, companies responded accordingly:

  • Goal 13: Climate Action
  • Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
  • Goal 7: Affordable Energy
  • Goal 6: Water Purification and Sanitation
  • Goal 11: Perpetual City

What this shows is that Taiwanese companies are aware of relevant risks and starting to take action, and the country on a whole has entered a new era of responsible production and a green “state of mind.”

CSRone’s report also found that over the past three years, Taiwan has matured its green supply chain practices, growing from 320 specific policies in 2015 to 422 in 2017. From the industry perspective, the growth momentum of responding to the SDGs in 2017 came from the technology industry with the increase from 18 to 59 companies (accounting for 32% of overall technology industry). It is dominated by semiconductor, electronic parts/components, and computers and peripheral equipment industries. Manufacturing industry came in second, with the increase from 8 to 33 companies (accounting for 17% of overall manufacturing industry). It is mainly food and chemical industries. As for financial industry, the increase was from 7 to 19 companies (accounting for 40% of overall financial industry). At last, in service industry the increase was from 7 to 26 companies (accounting for 33% of overall service industry), and is dominated by other industries and shipping industry.

According to the analysis results this year, we found that more than 100 companies have responded to the SDGs in their CSR reports. We believes that sustainable development is the key new competitiveness for companies, which should focus on their own core competitiveness, sustainable development goals related to the company’s operations, and the SDGs given the highest priority by the country.