The sustainable development approach has become mainstream at the global level. In September 2015, the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a guide to sustainable development that must be implemented globally.
Rotua Tampubolon, the ResponsiBank coalition representative from Perkebunan Prakarsa asserted, “Financial institutions, especially banks, can have a big hand in realizing SDGs through their investment policies in various industrial sectors. OJK as the regulator of the financial services industry has even published a Sustainable Finance Roadmap as a guide. Therefore, banks should have a credit and investment policy that carries a sustainable and socially and environmentally responsible paradigm. ”
In this regard, the Indonesian ResponsiBank Coalition assessed and ranked 11 banks in Indonesia. The assessment is based on lending and investment policies as well as operational policies related to the social and environmental responsibilities of each bank being assessed. Although 2016 is the second time this assessment has been carried out, the results obtained still show that banks in Indonesia still do not care enough about the aspects of social and environmental responsibility in their policies.
“The largest national banks such as Mandiri, BCA, BRI, and BNI are still far behind compared to multinational bank branches headquartered in developed countries (OECD) such as HSBC (United Kingdom), Citibank (United States) and Mitsubishi-UFJ (Japan), “Said Rotua.
In the category of foreign banks, HSBC received the highest score of 37.83 percent. While in the category of national banks the highest value achieved by Bank Danamon was only 10.98 percent of the scale of 0-100 percent. Compared to the results of last year’s ranking, even though the ranking in the category of foreign banks remained, there was a shift in rank among several national banks. Bank Danamon shifts BNI from the highest rating. BCA as the largest national private bank rose one rank from last year, although its value did not change much at only 1.74%. While the two foreign capital mix banks headquartered in ASEAN countries, namely OCBC-NISP (Singapore) and CIMB-Niaga (Malaysia) slumped to the most distended ranking with a value of 1.52 percent and 1.13 percent. This ranking change occurred due to differences in methodology and the amount of information published in each bank’s Annual Report and Sustainability Report (the results of the ranking and full assessment can be accessed at www.responsibank.id).
“In general, national banks have not published much of their policies in applying sustainability principles in important cross-cutting themes related to social and environmental aspects such as climate change, biodiversity, human rights, and workers’ rights. Whereas by implementing more responsible policies, banks will be able to contribute more to sustainable development and poverty reduction,” added Rotua.
Kurniawan Sabar, WALHI Campaign Manager added, “Banking institutions, especially in Indonesia, must abandon outdated practices that are no longer in line with the vision of environmental sustainability and respect for human rights. Banks must be more progressive, not just promoting ‘green policies’ on paper or lip service, but must be more visionary and brave to immediately leave projects and investments to risk the destruction of the environment, climate change, and violations of human rights. ”
“If this is not done, the bank will no longer be part of the solution, but instead will directly be part of the problem in development,” concluded Kurniawan.
Contact Person:
Rotua Nuraini Tampubolon-Coordinator of the ResponsiBank Coalition Secretariat (rnuraini@theprakarsa.org)