Biodiversity: The next frontier in financial risk managementPwC Switzerland and WWF Switzerland find in their new report "Nature is too big to fail – Biodiversity: the next frontier in financial risk management" that the financial risks associated with the loss of biodiversity will become increasingly important in 2020 - especially in the lead-up to the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in October in Kunming (China). As climate change and the loss of biodiversity mutually reinforce each other, decision-makers face a huge challenge to respond to this double crisis, as the risk of financial market instability significantly increases.
The World Bank has warned that the annual costs associated with drug-resistant infections could be as large as those of the global financial crisis that started in 2008. The Access to Medicine Foundation's AMR Benchmark is the first and only independent measure of how pharmaceutical companies involved in developing and supplying antibacterial and antifungal medicines and vaccines are taking action to limit AMR. The 2020 AMR Benchmark has evaluated for the second time how the most important players in the antibiotic market are addressing the rise of resistance and the global need for appropriate access to antibiotics.Overall, the Benchmark includes metrics for 8 large research-based pharmaceutical companies, 9 generic medicine manufacturers, and 13 small and medium-sized enterprises.
Banks, insurers and pension funds are as culpable
for the climate emergency as the fossil fuel
industry - especially those attending the
World Economic Forum in Davos.To continue financing fossil fuel expansion is
today’s equivalent of betting the bank - and the
global economy - on subprime mortgage backed
securities over a decade ago; fuelling a crisis,
which even if it generates short-term profit,
will inevitably cause economic catastrophe
alongside the climate emergency
The world cannot wait for the fog of geopolitical and geo-economic uncertainty to lift. Opting to ride out the current period in the hope that the global system will “snap back” runs the risk of missing crucial windows to address pressing challenges. On key issues such as the economy, the environment, technology and public health, stakeholders must find ways to act quickly and with purpose within an unsettled global landscape. This is the context in which the World Economic Forum publishes the 15th edition of the Global Risks Report.
The responsible investing landscape is evolving extremely rapidly, as more investors integrate ESG into their processes, initiatives reshape investment frameworks, and regulators increasingly step in to cement the role of Environmental, Social and Governance-related criteria. In a short timeframe, ESG has gone from being a “nice to have” to a “must have”.
This paper provides a classification for climate related resolutions and applies this classification
to a large dataset of resolutions filed at
companies’ general meetings.
This report is part of a multi-year project into corporate pension schemes’ approach to climate
change risk and sits alongside direct engagement with schemes to raise awareness and standards
across the industry.
This work takes the macro and sector level outcomes of the Inevitable Policy Response Forecast Policy Scenario and models the impact of these on the iShares
MSCI ACWI ETF constituents if repricing occurred today, using a company “bottom up” approach. These impacts are measured in terms of the difference
between a scenario reflecting stated policies (akin to the IEA STEPS or NPS) and the FPS.
The 2030 agenda for sustainable development, set in 2015, introduced the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the United Nation. Though the SDGs were meant to be adapted on a country level, we believe that the SDGs are an important milestone in effective sustainable investing. As more and more investors are referring to the SDGs as a framework on measuring positive impact. Thus, the SDGs can be seen as helping to shift the focus of market participants and academics towards purpose and positive impact of investments, whereas the implementation of ESG considerations has been considered so far more as prudent risk management.
After years stuck in the margins of EU policymaking, climate change and
environment has in recent months become one of the most crucial issues on the
political agenda. Incoming European Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen
proposed the ‘European Green Deal’ as the first of her political priorities.