PE Technical Guide, Investing in Nature, Transitions, and ESG Education
Here are 5 ESG insights you might have missed this week:
Let the Great Transition Begin-
An opinion piece with the authors claiming that instead of aiming to restore that pre-2020 way of life, our leaders should set their sights on creating a different, better world.
World leaders will soon shift their attention from crisis response to pandemic recovery, and there will be strong pressure to return to the pre-pandemic “normal.”
Given the scale and shock of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is understandable that many leaders would seek a rapid return to the status quo ante. But now that vaccines have created a long-awaited opportunity to build anew, re-creating the conditions that led to the crises of 2020 would be a mistake.
TCFD for Private Equity General Partners: New Technical Guide-
Private equity GPs need a robust framework to assess climate-related risk and to help guide them through the transition. This guide sets out the actions they can take to address the four-pillar framework of the recommendations proposed by the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).
The PRI and INDEFI co-authored this guidance based on interviews with GPs, LPs and Service Providers. It includes examples of current practices of GPs who are at different stages of developing a strategy to address climate-related risk.
The guide also highlights practical resources that are available to support GPs in assessing the materiality of climate risk within a portfolio and how to conduct scenario analysis for holding companies.
The Little Book of Investing in Nature-
By Global Canopy, the latest installment of their Little Book series sets out how the private and public sector can shift from financing nature negative activities to nature positive ones.
The report provides valuable data and infographics to explain why reducing emissions and enhancing carbon sinks in pour food system address climate change.
As the international community considers how to finance biodiversity protection for the next decade and beyond, The Little Book of Investing in Nature aims to help governments, NGOs, the private sector and others compare existing and future options for financing conservation in a clear and consistent way.
A simple guide to financing life on Earth, it offers practical steps and more than 40 mechanisms to support nature, as well as 25 case studies showing how these examples are supporting biodiversity around the world.
ESG Investing Cries Out For Trained Finance Professionals-
Sustainable finance is a growth area, but competing standards make it tricky to teach.
"What is often described as an “alphabet soup” of acronyms denoting the different forms of ESG evaluation and reporting — from SASB and GRI to TCFD and GIIRS — leaves companies and asset managers, as well as finance professors, scratching their heads."
“Companies are sinking in a sea of too much data,” says Colin Mayer, professor of management studies at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School. “They are confused and irritated by the amount of information that they’re expected to provide.”
“There is student demand for this, but also all the asset managers come to us and say: ‘We have to run ESG funds, our clients want them, and we don’t have people who can run them.’ So there’s acute demand from the employer side.”
Source: https://www.ft.com/content/d92a89ec-740c-11ea-90ce-5fb6c07a27f2
In Search of Impact Alpha - A Case Study by Impak-
impak’s case study, based on Vega Investment Managers' Transformation Responsable fund (subsidiary of Natixis Wealth Management), aims to demonstrate that the search for impact alpha is worth overcoming the argument that impact assessments would encourage taking impact into account during investment decisions on moral arguments alone.
“ We believe that companies that create positive impacts, address the SDGs, and make them a central part of the strategy with a stakeholder focus will add more value to consumers and investors in the long term. impak is therefore interested to discover whether or not there is an ex post relationship between impact performance and financial performance.”
Source (Registration required): https://casestudy.impak.eco/impact-alpha/
One more thing: 21-minute video from The Economist - "How can business survive climate change?". Climate change is about to upend the corporate world through weather-related disasters, regulation and lawsuits. Can businesses react and adapt in time?
Find the video here- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vOwjNTDwBE
Do share your comments or the content you think our community should not miss!