Jamie Hicks
In 2020, the world faced a health crisis, which brought economic and social turmoil. It showed how deep inequalities make society as a whole more vulnerable — providing important lessons for building resilience in an era of climate change and rampant inequality. Over the long-run, it could be a turning point for responsible investment.
With the development of multiple new green taxonomies at the national level the key to their implementation is going to be broad and granular green datasets. Analysis by FTSE Russell finds a substantial green investment opportunity, which is growing faster than the overall equity market and is diversified across company size and geography. The latest trends report, through the lens of FTSE Russell’s Green Revenues 2.0 data, shows the green economy is:Represented by more than 3,000 global listed companiesSizeable, equivalent to a US$4 trillion market cap opportunityOver 5% of the total listed equity marketGrowing faster than the overall equity marketBoth diversified by company size and geography, although certain areas such as Europe and Japan are more exposed
This report is the second update on progress, issued by the Climate Action 100+ initiative. It summarises overall progress of the initiative including an update on measurement and benchmarking, key focus company commitments against the initiative’s goals, growth in signatories, and a sector level update on company performance against a set of indicators aligned to the aims of the initiative.
Climate risks are now fully recognized as financial risks by asset managers, investors, central banks, and financial supervisors. As a result, the integration of climate risk metrics into risk management processes is moving up agendas worldwide. In that context, a rapidly growing number of market participants and financial authorities are exploring which metrics to use to capture climate risks, and to what extent the use of different metrics delivers heterogeneous results. This discussion note takes a first step in analyzing the convergence in assessments of climate-related transition risks across metrics providers, based on the ECB corporate bond portfolio. Our findings show that firms’ risk assessments across metrics are fairly heterogeneous but tend to converge on which firms are most and least exposed to transition risks. We also show that the temperature targets and time horizons underlying the metrics matter, although moderately, for the assessment of firms’ risk exposure and that providers using similar methodologies tend to deliver more convergent assessments. Our findings contribute to the growing recognition that asset managers, investors, central banks and financial supervisors can and should use available metrics to better integrate climate risks into risk management and financial supervision.
One clear conclusion we can draw from our work on the Corporate Climate Lobbying theme 2017–2019 is that lobbying that counteracts the Paris Agreement is a widespread problem. The aim of this report is to increase awareness about the problem of climate lobbying, and to encourage more investors to engage with the issue.
The Blended Finance Taskforce has just open-sourced some of the most promising business models and financial innovations, all aimed at transforming the world’s food and land use systems. But its director Katherine Stodulka tells us why, right now, more innovation isn’t the biggest missing ingredient…
The Responsible Lobbying Framework was developed initially to allow a group of Civil Society Organisations to hold accountable their corporate partners during a dialogue process. The specific terms of that dialogue remain confidential, but all parties agreed that the Framework should have a wider use and provided a valuable tool to increase transparency and accountability.The Framework can be used both as a set of globally applicable principles and standards, outlining what responsible lobbying would look like, and as an evaluation tool of a specific organisation’s lobbying activities.
We have an obligation to understand the sustainability of the companies in which we invest. Find out how we put this into practice and more by viewing our ESG Annual Report highlights.
The unconventional methods involved in the extraction and production of Canadian oil sands, as well as the unique geographical position of oil sands deposits, trigger important environmental and social challenges reaching far beyond Canada’s borders (page 9, “ESG Challenges”). These operations also carry financial risk. On average, oil sands operations are more capital-intensive and involve higher production costs compared to other types of fuel, with historical pipeline capacity constraints further weighing on oil sands economics (page 12, “Economic Challenges”). As a result, oil sands operations are on a collision course with the goals of the Paris Agreement...
Integrating ESG Holistically In Private Equity: A Strategic Approach builds on a previous publication, SASB and Private Markets, to demonstrate how investors can leverage SASB Standards as a foundational cornerstone in building a ESG strategy for private equity. The paper describes and demystifies the interconnected ESG ecosystem, offers practical insights for the various stages of the investment process through a GP lens, and includes case studies from Generation Investment Management and Partners Group.