Summary from Paul Abberley, Interim CEO Aviva Investors on his time at the Rio+20 summit.

1. Transcript
Paul Abberley, Interim CEO Aviva Investors – shares his views on our call
for corporate sustainability reporting following the Rio+20 summit
27 June 2012
The world’s governments meet every 10 years to talk about sustainable
developments, and try to move that particular agenda forward.
The latest meeting was in Rio. So why were Aviva there? Well, some 18 months
ago, we began to convene a coalition of investors, industry-groups and NGOs,
with a common purpose to try to get the Rio summit to move forward our goal of
having companies report on the sustainability of their business strategies.
Why does that matter to Aviva? Well, for most of our customers, their savings are
quite long-term, and they want the way that their money’s invested to reflect that –
but of course, if our portfolio managers are going to invest for the long-term, they
need to understand the long-term strategies of those companies, and it’s only if
the companies report those sustainable strategies that we’re able to evaluate
them, and make the correct investment decisions with our customers’ money.
And hence, we’ve been working for a number of years to try to encourage
corporate reporting, but we felt that the pace of improvement was too slow, I
mean, yes, companies are doing more in this space, but we need to up the pace
of improvement, and we felt this summit was the perfect opportunity to begin to
put some real energy.
So what was the outcome, how did we get on? Well, we built a lot of momentum
over the 18 months, and I’m delighted that in the later stages we also got support
from the governments – many governments around the world, including the UK,
and indeed, when I attended the summit in Rio, it was as a member of the UK
delegation, so we had a lot of support to try to mandate the reporting of
companies’ long-term strategies, and their sustainability.
Of course, not everyone agrees on this particular agenda, there are arguments in
both directions, and the political discussions in Rio themselves were, you know,
quite heated at times, and that’s why it was important that we were there in
person, to be able to provide input and evidence.
The outcome, I’m pleased to say, is that the text issued by the world’s
governments did indeed include a strong reference to embedding the sustainable
reporting of strategies in companies reporting. It wasn’t legally binding – I mean,
that was always going to be a very ambitious goal – but nevertheless, it was

2. there, and we’re very pleased with the outcome that, collectively, the various
bodies that have been part of this endeavour have achieved.
So what happens next? Well, there’s a number of routes we could take at this
point in time. The summit itself discussed sustainable development goals, and it
may well be that corporate reporting gets folded into that exercise – alternatively,
there may be a regional focus, we were really pleased with the amount of energy
and enthusiasm among the member-states of the European Union, and indeed
the EU itself, in terms of moving this forward. So it might well be that in coming
months, we try to make some real progress in Europe, and that may well provide
an example and a template of how this can work for bodies more generally.
But we’ll be operating on many fronts. Whichever the future direction is, Aviva’s
certainly ready to participate and add our weight to the exercise where we can be
of help.
END