The Deal With Businesses and World Peace

The United Nations released its global corporate sustainability report today. Georg Kell, executive director of the

Global Compact, discussed the part that business play in helping the world find peace on CNBC's Squawk Box Thursday morning. "Business has a role to play in supporting peace. Through commerce and trade ties are being made, cultures come to know each other, respect can be forced at the workplace, companies can introduce measures that contribute to peaceful collaboration. We have a big program going on in business for peace worldwide," said Kell. "But obviously politics are another game." Kell leads the world's largest sustainability movement with over 8,000 companies from more than 135 countries. "The biggest progress has been made in human history reducing poverty, and that's largely due to private investment," said Kell. According to Kell, the report details the role of business in proactively leading in human rights and environmental issues, and that "corporate sustainability is serious business. It impacts long-term financial success."

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A huge paradigm shift has happened from only a few years ago, with more than 50 percent of the boards of over 1,700 companies making decisions on sustainability issues at the board level, Kell said. Of those, 65 percent of CEOs design and introduce the strategies. He did note, however, large challenge with implementation and tricky issues, but also cited enormous progress, saying that the longer a company stays engaged in the global compact, the better their performance is. "Business leaders today understand that for risk mitigation and for market building purposes, you better be proactive. If you're not proactive, you're really running big reputation risks. You also wont be able to really build trust in communities where you invest," said Kell. "And the big story behind this story is that today investment is largely about building markets. What used to be resource takers, now are market builders. Companies have a direct stake in contributing to stability."