Márcia Balisciano
Head of Corporate Responsibility
London, United Kingdom
It has been exciting to work with so many great people in the business on being a good company. I’m glad we are recognised by a number of outside organisations as a CR leader, including the UN Global Compact to which we are a signatory, rating agencies like Sustainalytics and MSCI, and benchmarks like Dow Jones Sustainability Index, Bloomberg Equality Index and CDP for environmental performance. However, we are never complacent. There is much more that we need and will do and I’m glad to be a part of that effort.
I am proud to be the founding global head of corporate responsibility (CR) at RELX, engaging with colleagues across the business to increase the positive contributions we make to society through our work, while minimising any negative impact. For example, we prioritise inclusion and I am pleased to sponsor our Women in Tech mentoring programme. We employ approximately 9,000 technologists and want to ensure that even more of them are women.
We also work to limit the environmental impact of our operations. We set science-based carbon targets and are on track to meet some key objectives including ensuring 100% of our energy comes from renewable sources. CR is owned by everyone at RELX and there are over 1000 employees involved in our CR networks, including employee-led Green Teams which pursue good environmental practice in our locations around the world.
We set public CR goals, including on what we call our unique contributions to society: universal sustainable access to information, promoting science and health, protection of society, furthering the rule of law and fostering communities. One of these goals is to continue expanding the free RELX SDG Resource Centre, which advances the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Here we provide articles, tools, data, news, events and more from our business, the UN and other partners. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, we worked quickly to make resources available that could speed responses, including a podcast series which I’ve hosted on the impact of COVID-19 on the SDGs with interviews from among others, Dr. Richard Horton, Editor in Chief of The Lancet, part of Elsevier.
Given our expertise in data and analytics, we are creating SDG Graphics on the RELX SDG Resource Centre for each of the 17 SDGs. These show which nations are producing research, how good and collaborative it is, and importantly, the output divide between global North and South. On SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), for example, over the period 2014–2018 a critical finding is that only 1% of the output came from low income countries, those most affected by the need for clean water and sanitation. We can identify the challenges and by sharing our knowledge, we also want to be part of solutions.
My team leads the RELX Environmental Challenge, a prize promoting better access to water and sanitation in the developing world which aligns with SDG 6. There is a $50,000 first prize and a $25,000 second prize but in 2020, we are adding a collaboration prize to encourage past winners to work together and to also celebrate 10 years of the Challenge.
It has been exciting to work with so many great people in the business on being a good company. I’m glad we are recognised by a number of outside organisations as a CR leader, including the UN Global Compact to which we are a signatory, rating agencies like Sustainalytics and MSCI, and benchmarks like Dow Jones Sustainability Index, Bloomberg Equality Index and CDP for environmental performance. However, we are never complacent. There is much more that we need and will do and I’m glad to be a part of that effort.
You can read a story about how RELX became a global leader in CR here.