Recent years have seen accelerated uptake of sustainability-related standards and practices. Enterprises, investors and financial institutions are increasingly paying attention to their sustainability-related risks, and are managing some of their impacts in the process. Despite this, the private sector’s management of impacts on people and the natural environment continues, in most cases, to be done in a narrow and fragmented way, if at all.

This thought piece argues that impact management is not only a human and environmental imperative, but is also critical to sustaining economic and financial performance of the market as a whole. It articulates the importance of a more deliberate and comprehensive approach to managing sustainability issues, and ends with a call to action for the various actors that are needed to help mainstream impact management.