Ladies and Gentlemen, in view of the potential benefits that can accrue to a society, the business community in Zambia, and Mufulira in particular, are hereby challenged to make Corporate Social Responsibility an integral part of every business decision and action.. Companies should demonstrate corporate citizenship in what they are as a company, how they conduct business, how they take care of their employees, as well as in how they interact with the public at large. Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, without being exhaustive, allow me to suggest some avenues through which good corporate citizenship can be encouraged among the Zambian business community. •  As a first step for pursuing Corporate Social Responsibility, companies can focus on defining the normative directions that would be appropriate and acceptable to them. These directions can be converted into a formal statement of business values and practices. Such statements can be presented in the form of principles, guidelines, or codes of conduct. For instance, a code of conduct can aim at regulating activities of an industry within the principles of responsible business by requiring the signatories to uphold fundamental human rights, to respect the culture and customs of their employees and local communities affected by their actions. In effect, these become a commitment vehicle for the business to declare its perspective and way of doing business with respect to the challenges relating to Corporate Social Responsibility.
At the micro-prudential level, the good progress regulators have made through climate-focused fora such as the NGFS and Sustainable Insurance Forum (SIF) has catalysed work across international standard setting bodies and other authorities including the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) and the Financial Stability Board (FSB). On that note, I welcome the FSB taking a more strategic and central role on climate-related financial risks across the wider financial system. In the UK, the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) set out supervisory expectations for banks and insurers on the management of the financial risks from climate change in April 2019.4 We have provided further guidance for firms on these expectations and have set a deadline for firms ambitiously to embed them by the end of this year.5  Of all the building blocks required to manage effectively climate-related risks, climate disclosure is among the most essential - not only for transparency and for risk management purposes, but to facilitate the flow of capital towards investments that are consistent with an orderly economy-wide transition to net-zero. Consequently, it is also integral to the UK’s legislative commitment to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. For these reasons, the Bank has long supported the FSB’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) 6 and has worked with the UK Government and regulators to progress further and implement mandatory disclosures requirements across the UK economy by 2025.7  Yet climate change is a global issue, which no nation can solve alone.