Advancing the SDGs: Understanding and Improving the Role of Corporate Transparency through Big Data

Date: July 16 -17, 2018
Location: São Paulo, Brazil

The Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) and the EMGP project, in partnership with B3 and FGVces, had its second high-level roundtable discussion to dive more deeply into the topic of how Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (BDAI) are currently being used to evaluate corporate impacts on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues, and how BDAI technologies could be more widely applied and specifically tailored to gather, analyze, and disseminate ESG information on a more geographically diverse set of firms. Mario Saraiva, EMGP Coordination Team moderated three sessions on (1) How BDAI technologies are being used for ESG/SDG analysis: Insights; (2) Using BDAI in Brazil: Conceptual, technological, and operational issues; and (3) A roadmap for using BDAI to improve understanding of emerging markets.

The main objective of the meeting was to advance the discussion of how information related to business sustainability (considering ESG and Agenda 2030/SDGs topics) is currently made available and processed and to assess the opportunities and challenges brought about by the new technologies (Big Data and Artificial Intelligence).