History

On the eve of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) [also known as the Earth Summit or Rio Summit] in June 1992, a new global organization - Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD) - was founded to involve business in sustainable development issues. A similar and parallel movement emerged in India at the very same time as the BCSD. In 1991, Ratan Tata of the Tata Group of Companies, a leading corporate conglomerate in India, was selected to represent India, China, and Southeast Asia in the BCSD. Being a past president of the leading industry association, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), known as the Confederation of Engineering Industry (CEI) at that time, Ratan Tata urged the industry association to organize a regional conference “Changing Course towards Sustainable Development”. Recognizing the importance of this emerging discipline, the then Director-General, Tarun Das, willingly accepted this responsibility. The regional initiative was lead by Avininder Singh, Chairman, CII National Environment Committee. Eminent global, regional, and national personalities participated in this milestone conference. This included Maurice Strong, Chairman of the Earth Summit, Stephan Schmidheiny, Founder of the BCSD and author of Changing Course, Hugh Faulkner, a former Canadian politician, industrialist & co-founder of BCSD, and Ratan Tata. Through this conference, Indian industry leaders made a strong commitment and a solid intellectual foundation was laid to what is today the CII-ITC Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Development (CII-ITC CESD).