The latest in the spheres of socially responsible investing, impact investing, and other ways investors and shareholders are asserting their desire for ethical investment options.
Today, the Corporate Reporting Dialogue — a coalition of major international corporate reporting standard setters and framework providers — announced a groundbreaking, two-year project focused on driving better alignment in the corporate reporting landscape, to make it easier for companies to prepare effective and coherent disclosures that meet the evolving information needs of capital markets and society.
Last week at Sustainable Brands’ New Metrics ’18 conference in Philadelphia, PA, over 300 delegates from brands, NGOs, strategists and practitioners across sectors gathered to share the newest credible tools and solutions for assessing the ROI of Sustainable Business.
The Hispanic Federation, together with actor Lin-Manuel Miranda and his family, today announced the launch of a five-year initiative to revitalize Puerto Rico’s coffee sector. The founding partners include Hispanic Federation, Nespresso, The Rockefeller Foundation, Starbucks, TechnoServe and World Coffee Research, all of which are committed to supporting smallholder coffee farmers on the island.
The often-patrician act of philanthropy and the #MeToo movement may not seem like the most obvious pairing, but for Cynthia Nimmo, president and CEO of the Women’s Funding Network (WFN), they are two sides of the same coin.
As impact investing marks its 10-year anniversary, the movement reaches an inflection point. As with any movement that quickly gains traction and attracts followers, it also sees outsiders and newcomers jumping on the impact bandwagon to profit from the trendline. In the age of ‘fake news,’ what can the impact investing community do to ensure that real change happens?
One of many highlights of Climate Week NYC was a roundtable discussion hosted by SustainAbility and the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business, on “Innovating Investments for Climate Resilience.” Tensie Whelan, Director at the Center for Sustainable Business, moderated the conversation with Robert Engle, Director at NYU Stern Volatility Institute; Anne van Riel, Head of Sustainable Finance for the Americas at ING; and Courtney Thompson, Manager of Global Sustainable Finance at Morgan Stanley.
Responsible investing has been an overriding theme of the past two weeks, with a proliferation of new initiatives, campaigns and reports joining a growing list of recently released resources for sustainable and impact investors to increase the quality of their investments emerging during last week’s Global Climate Action Summit and this week at Climate Week.
Since its founding in 2006, EcoAct Group has grown from raising awareness at the local level in France into a global collection of experts engaging with the private and public sectors to aid in the transition to a low-carbon economy. In addition to advising companies on climate change and carbon neutrality strategies, EcoAct also conducts research to assess publicly listed companies’ efforts in these areas.
As the world’s focus turns to the opening of the United Nations’ 73rd session of the General Assembly, attention will turn to the state of progress on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), an overarching set of aims intended to improve environmental, economic and social conditions by 2030.
Big news from California: The state legislature has just passed a bill, SB 964, that requires two massive pension funds run by the state, the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS), to factor in climate-related financial risk and report progress both on that, and towards meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement.
A new GIIN report reiterates the need for impact investors to raise and direct new capital to help meet the UN SDGs by 2030.
This post has been translated from Japanese — read the original interview here.
Financial Services firms are lagging behind all other industries when it comes to climate change disclosure, according to a new data brief released by Datamaran — a global leader in Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions for non-financial risk management.
Amalgamated Bank — the US’ largest socially responsible bank, which recently acquired New Resource Bank — has committed to double the amount of assets New Resource has dedicated to financing socially responsible businesses over the next two years, moving from its current commitment of $350 million to at least $700 million by 2020.
More than 90 institutional investors, representing more than $6.7T in assets, have voiced their concerns over the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil’s relevance and effectiveness, and the current disconnect between its criteria and corporate policy commitments.
For many, the sustainable choice is the alternative choice: alternative lightbulbs, alternative cars, alternative shopping bags, alternative business models. But there’s no longer a need for the sustainability community to present itself this way — especially in relation to business. Every day, businesses face new and emerging risks related to environmental, social and governance (ESG)-related issues. In a world more connected than ever, these risks can be felt more directly and more immediately than they used to be.
Sustainable Brands recently talked to Wim Bartels, Program Lead at the Corporate Reporting Dialogue (CRD) about key issues and initiatives around the further development of corporate reporting.
Everyone’s heard of financial performance, asset performance and sustainability performance. Now comes purpose performance, a new measure of organizational performance that assesses impacts relative to the voluntary commitments organizations make to provide public benefits, contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or to generally pursue beneficial purposes of one kind or another. Let’s call performance accounting for purpose, "Purpose Accounting."
On Wednesday, 16 banks, the UN Environment Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and climate risk advisory firm Acclimatise published new methodologies that will help banks understand how the physical risks and opportunities of a changing climate might affect their loan portfolios. The methodologies are designed to enable banks to be more transparent about their exposure to climate-related risks and opportunities, in line with the recommendations of the Financial Stability Board's (FSB) Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).
Circulate Capital, a new impact-focused investment management company, launched today in partnership with Closed Loop Partners, a firm that invests in companies, technology and recycling infrastructure to advance the circular economy; and Ocean Conservancy, a leading nonprofit environmental advocacy organization working to protect the world’s oceans.