As part of our 49th Italian Pro Bono Roundtable, during the seminar “ESG and the Third Sector” and after the Keynote Speaker, Carlo Alberto Pratesi, Professor of Marketing, Innovation and Sustainability at the University of Roma Tre, we kicked off the debate with panelists Cristina De Luca (Board Member, CSVnet), Mauro Del Barba (President, Assobenefit), Stefano Fasani (Program Manager Open-es), Augusto Liani (Nonprofit and Clergy Representative, UniCredit), Giovanni Marsili (Partner, Gianni&Origoni) e Maria Teresa Ricciardi (General Counsel, Fondazione The Human Safety Net).
At the end of the talk, we asked some of them whether they see sustainability as an opportunity for collaboration and the risks and opportunities on the horizon.
Cristina De Luca, CSVnet Board Member
An opportunity for sustainability is certainly the understanding of the importance of building networks and forms of collaboration, i.e. no longer being alone, networks also between actors with different tasks, histories and charismas.
The risk is that, in the name of issues that are central today – such as sustainability and impact – we lose sight of what is action, both in the non-profit and profit world.
Mauro Del Barba, Assobenefit’s President
The opportunities are enormous and concern the great change that will take place in the market, in institutions, in the very culture of people that will lead to a repositioning of the economic values at stake and the financial flows.
This means that, both for companies and for the Third Sector, new unimaginable spaces will be created and therefore a culture of sustainability is very important.
The risk is that business as usual, the way of thinking, not seeing and the will not to change will pollute these processes, perhaps even appropriating some of the choices of the institutions, enacting a formal, bureaucratic change on the face of it, but which in reality does not change the paradigm and above all does not produce the desired impacts and this from an environmental point of view and not only would be a disaster.
Augusto Liani, Nonprofit and Clergy Representative, UniCredit
Sustainability is certainly an opportunity if governed, declined in its forms of ESG, but also in its forms of economic-financial balance, ethics and even Artificial Intelligence. But it must be governed, because if abandoned, it is dangerous: one can slip into activities, as we well know, of social washing and greenwashing.
Therefore, this transition must be accompanied with legal instruments, but also with the needs that start from the bottom, from the people and the community.
For those who were unable to attend in person or follow the event via streaming
a recording of the event and seminar is available our YouTube channel.
