Making positive contributions to society is both common sense and good business

Everyone benefits from a thriving, resilient and sustainable society. Businesses, alongside civil society and governments, have a role to play. Here one will find best practices, key motives for each stakeholder, drivers for change, ways to bridge divides and collaborate in pursuit of synergies. And importantly, understand how to secure return-on-investment doing good.

Consumer preferences

Tilt towards products and service that consider societal impact

Employee satisfaction

Grows when their work contributes to positive societal impact

Legal requirements

Increasingly enforce compliance with ESG standards

Poldering

“In the polder, everyone has to work together, or we all drown.”

Poldering is the Dutch practice of land reclamation where communities work together to build dikes and drain water to obtain usable land. Only in doing so, the technical complexity and ongoing maintenance demands to protect the country from the water, could be addressed. The establishment of ´water boards´ (waterschappen), which still exist today, were among the first cross-class democratic institutions, where different stakeholders—landowners, tenants, and municipalities—had voting rights based on their stake in water management.