Polman, who’s now the chair of social enterprise IMAGINE and a founding member of CNBC’s ESG Council, was talking to CNBC’s “Avenue Indicators Europe” Monday. 

“The pandemic has put us again in all probability 20-30 years on the sustainable improvement targets,” he stated, “And as soon as extra, the people who have been already marginalized in society together with the gender dimension … these individuals have suffered disproportionately. 

Girls, individuals of colour and younger persons are amongst these which have been discovered to have been harm most by the coronavirus disaster. 

On the plus aspect, Polman highlighted how governments had reacted to the disaster by spending trillions of {dollars} in an effort to help their economies. 

“And hopefully more and more, we’ll see a part of that spending shifting to greening our societies and likewise making certain that we tackle the problems of inequality,” he stated. 

Polman stated he believed there had been an “acceleration” of labor on environmental, social and governance points in the course of the pandemic, with a selected give attention to the social facet of those three parts. 

“The well being of the individuals, the safety of individuals in our worth chain, the social security nets which have include it, are actually very a lot on the agenda,” he stated.