I’m pleased to be working in a consultancy capacity with a number of public and private organisations. I’ll mostly be keeping up with the latest ESG reporting and disclosure requirements, becoming a trusted advisor to our clients leveraging my background in forestry and water management. I look forward to building that knowledge into the Rio Platform.
What began in the 1960s as a minuscule vote of financial conscience and remained that way until around a decade ago, has now emerged as a mighty force: ESG investing. In growing numbers, investors now act on ESG, even as they keep close watch on their returns. Indeed, the potential for financial choices to positively impact the planet matter more than ever and today’s worldwide markets are waking up to this reality.
In America, 2021 investment giant BlackRock has launched its U.S. Carbon Transition Readiness ETF. And globally, ESG funds are projected to approach £1 trillion by 2030. That would surpass £4.1 billion invested for all of 2018 by close to 200 times.
Now the question is: How can the EU encourage its financial market participants and financial advisors to invest in sustainable options? This is where Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) enters. SFDR is a solution put forward by EU’s High-Level Expert Group (HLEG) on sustainable finance.
The COP26, officially the 26th Conference of the Parties, will take place in Glasgow from the 31st of October to the 12th of November 2021. The 197 parties to the UNFCCC (United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change) will meet to accelerate the progress on the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement. COP26 will focus on four main goals:
ESG investment is growing—or maybe exploding is more accurate. A recent Bloomberg analysis projects that worldwide ESG investing could hit £39 trillion by 2025. That’s a third of all global assets under management.
There is good reason for the rush to ESG, investors and companies are seeing powerful results. In reviewing close to 2200 empirical studies by scholars and investors, three researchers found that the large majority reported positive links between ESG and stable corporate financial performance.
And yet, there remains numerous challenges when analysing ESG performance for investment funds. The two most important?
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Net zero refers to the balance between the amount of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) produced and the amount removed from the atmosphere. It’s imperative that businesses publicly discuss their plans to reduce emissions to encourage other organisations to take the same proactive approach towards climate action.
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Water shortage is becoming a greater concern to individuals, the environment, and the economy. Therefore organisations are now looking into how their operations and supply chains affect water resources throughout the world. The organisational water footprint approach was developed to enable systematic measurement of water use at the firm level.
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After last year’s rescheduling due to COVID-19, the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference will occur in Glasgow between 1 November and 12 November 2021. Arguably, it could be more important than all prior meetings. The event arrives just three months after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released an alarming assessment report that made headlines worldwide. The hope of many (including us!) is that COP26 will yield crucial progress in reducing global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. If so, it will mark the latest chapter in a UN effort that dates back three decades.
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Like many terms in the sustainability space, “materiality assessment” needs some unpacking. What is it? What needs to be assessed? Why? And once that’s done, then what?
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Often it’s difficult to make calls about a full portfolio’s ESG performance because different measurement strategies and frameworks mean you cannot easily gather, maintain, or analyse environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data across different portfolio companies.
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If you are based in the UK, SECR, which stands for Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting, will be an acronym that you see included in the plethora of sustainability frameworks and terms. With SECR compliance, businesses must annually report and disclose their energy and carbon information.