The two keynote speakers both received a lot of questions from the audience, and the event’s interactive nature continued in the ‘House of Commons’ debate. Wouter van ‘t Hoff (Rabobank), Daan Spaargaren (Eumedion) and Hans Koeleman (KPN) provided introductions to the main themes and propositions.
Proposition 1: Reporting on SGD’s
Wouter van ‘t Hoff stated that reporting on just a few SDGs is a form of whitewashing, and that every company must report on the SDGs in a separate report. The public largely disagreed with this statement – their preference was to opt for some applicable SDGs.
Proposition 2: Financial versus non-financial information
Daan Spaargaren stated that non-financial data is more important for investors than financial data. Those who agreed with this statement stated that non-financial information can say more about the future of an organization.
Proposition 3: Costs versus benefits
Hans Koeleman suggested that really good reporting costs more than it yields. The discussion triggered by this made it clear that good reporting also has a positive effect internally, for example on employees.
Visitors were invited to attend one of the three break-out sessions to conclude the program, where they explored the following topics in more detail:
- ‘Materiality, now and in the future’ (Nick de Ruiter, Sustainalize)
- ‘Everything has a story to tell’ (Monique Mulder, Mattmo)
- ‘The higher goal of reporting’ (Herma van der Laarse, ABN AMRO)