As the impacts of human activity on the natural world have become increasingly clear in recent years, alongside human dependences on a healthy environment, the conversation has shifted from “Should we save nature?” to “How do we pay for it?”. Few in government or business today doubt the inherent value of nature or the importance of managing it sustainably. The interest in halting the loss of biodiversity is enormous and is coming from unexpected quarters. Meeting after international meeting closes with strongly worded calls to protect nature, and the dialogue among the public sector, business, and civil society has never been more active. But once economics rears its head, then the dialogue becomes muffled, and participants start shuffling papers and shifting their eyes nervously.
Our new report provides investment decision-makers with a business case to invest in mangrove restoration, which done at scale could return $11.8 billion by 2040. We propose the creation of a global safety net of 40 strategically-located cities to help protect this remarkable planetary ecosystem.At the same time, the creation of a Municipal Mangrove Bond Fund provides a new mechanism for cities to access adaptation finance, with a fixed-income product that is familiar to investors. The report finds that the price of carbon must at least double in order for voluntary carbon markets to finance regeneration globally.
New roadmap discusses lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic and outlines the way forward for policymakers, regulators, and investors
The report provides practical and impactful recommendations on the role that financial centers can play to support the economic recovery through the sustainability agenda.
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.
Climate. ESG bubbles. Biodiversity. Disclosure. Social inequality. The topics don’t
get much bigger — or more systemic. Here’s our analysis of the five ESG trends that
will matter most to companies and their investors in 2021.