Meet our members | Corina Andrea MURAFA BENGA: SDGs need to permeate corporate sustainability strategies

Corina Andrea Murafa Benga has been a member of the EESC since November 2023 in the Civil Society Organisations' Group with the background as an Expert affiliated to the Centre for the Study of Democracy, and co-founder of the Romanian Energy Poverty Observatory. She comes from Romania and is a member of the sections for the Transport, Energy, Infrastructure and the Information Society (TEN), and the Agriculture, Rural Development and the Environment (NAT). Her activities focus in particular on public policy fields, academic work and activism in climate, energy and environment.

As a new member of the NAT section, what are your expectations for this mandate?

I hope to bridge the gap between civil society organisations working on the ground on environmental issues and climate action in my home country, Romania, and beyond, in other Member States, and the decision-making process in Brussels. I have the experience of representing climate and energy NGOs in the national Economic and Social Committee in Romania and participation in decision-making processes is not an easy task even at national level, because NGOs lack capacity, funding, knowledge and resources to engage in lengthy advocacy processes. All the more, participating in European decision-making processes is a daunting task for the vast majority of local and national NGOs. Unfortunately, this creates a democratic deficit, and a feeling of powerlessness, with citizens ending up believing that some faraway Brussels bureaucrats decide for them and instead of them. I hope to bring a small contribution to changing this, by keeping a systematic open communication channel with civil society organisations and thus giving voice to their concerns in Brussels. 

I also hope to forge collaborations with peers in the committee so that we can build stronger pan-European alliances on topics that are of concern for citizens everywhere in Europe. Air quality, waste management, access to clean and affordable energy, upholding clear climate targets that can guide decisions everywhere in Europe, just transition mechanisms including in sectors often neglected such as the agri-food systems - all of these are topics that European citizens and civil society organisation care deeply about and have significant expertise in, and the NAT section is the right venue to have these voices heard. 

Not least, as an academic and university lecturer, I am deeply concerned about the lack of evidence-based policy-making and the spread of climate misinformation and fake news, which I think are critical topics we need to find better solutions for in all European institutions.

As part of the NAT section meeting on 25 January, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network launched the 5^th Europe Sustainable Development Report. What were the key takeaways from this meeting?

I teach sustainability strategies in energy companies at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies. As such, I am very familiar with the SDG framework and with the ESG criteria that businesses are now guiding their strategies around. I also collaborate on sustainability education with a select number of private companies and what I can say is that we need to find better ways of supporting businesses to truly quantify their contributions to the SDGs beyond current monitoring reports. Right now, the SDG framework still rests too much with the CSR/Communications department and too little with the CEO/CFO/Board Room, where hard KPIs are tracked and reported on. The Europe Sustainable Development Report is a gem in terms of information and a rigorous data-based approach to development, but it needs to permeate corporate sustainability strategies, not just government reporting and academic research.

How does your work on sustainability connect with your experience on the ground?

I hold experience in policy analysis and high-level policy advocacy, so I understand a lot the European lingo in terms of what is being [done] at the EESC, but what makes me stand out is that I combine rigorous academic credentials with grassroots work in capacity-building, awareness raising and education primarily around energy poverty and the just transition to a low-carbon economy. I have been engaging in the past years with hundreds if not thousands of students, small entrepreneurs, corporate managers, local public administration officials and many other stakeholders in our societies. All the time I try to both get their perspectives on policy debates they do not usually contribute to and to get them to understand better policy frameworks and mechanisms and how these affect their work on the ground.