A Sustainable Future

What does sustainable investment mean to the world’s largest academic endowment fund? Learn how Harvard’s endowment fund, which supports 40% of the university’s research, educational programs and financial aid, has emerged as a leader among endowment funds in applying sustainable and responsible investment principles. For more information visit www.man.com/maninstitute/responsible-investment This...

How are pension savers reshaping investor sand corporate responses to climate risk disclosure and gender diversity? Who speaks for them and agitates on their behalf for change? Who has their back? Learn how ShareAction’s approach to investor activism – galvanizing individual saver interests to ultimately influencing policy outcomes – creates a fairer, more responsible financial system. For more in...

How do you go about jump starting an energy transition that has to balance ambitious environmental objectives with labour stability? Learn how Germany is working towards this in a plan to phase out coal by 2030, how the EU Parliament is redefining what sustainable finance really means and why environmental politics is ultimately about people. For more information visit www.man.com/maninstitute/res...

Investors have traditionally been left out of the dialogue between states, NGOs, civil society and corporations on social and environmental issues. Learn how that's changing as international investor initiatives, like the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), are coalescing investor interests to replicate the success of the Paris Agreement in other dimensions, such as labour rights and econ...

Listen to an inside account of the 2018 Kellogg-Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge, from judges' commentary to a final interview with the winning team from Singapore Management University. Learn how the winning idea - the ASEAN Storm Resilience Fund – not only helps farming communities in Southeast Asian countries to withstand extreme weather events but accomplishes this through grassr...

Investors often play up the merits of active engagement with companies. But how does that work with sovereign nations, specifically with conflict-affected regions that generally fall on investors’ exclusion lists? Harriet Lamb explains how the role of NGOs like International Alert are working to provide guidance to sectors like extractive industries who involved in conflict affected regions. She a...

Despite its early troubles, Europe's Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) has to be recognized as the most ambitious effort to apply market-based pricing to carbon emissions. Now, more than 10 years after the launch of EU-ETS, Europe is reinforcing the integrity of its carbon market alongside the emergence of other regional carbon markets like that in China. Mark Lewis discusses how he believes these...

Do you ever find yourself imagining that the forces behind Big Oil are unstoppable, that little can be done to counter climate change? Edward Mason describes why the Church Commissioners for England, who took on Exxon in a multi-year effort to improve its climate change transparency and disclosure policies, should change that view. Learn how the Commissioners built on their early engagement succes...

Nick Robins discusses why frameworks like the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS) are so important to ensuring the progress of sustainable development. Nick also explains why the Just Transition - an effort that combines the climate objectives with growth in green jobs formation - is critical to tackling the issue of economic inequality. For more information visit www.man.com/mani...

Are Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple the digital currencies of the future? Or are they just another asset bubble like the 17th century Dutch tulip mania? Professor Campbell Harvey explains why economists often underestimate the capabilities of cryptocurrencies as well as their underlying Blockchain technology. He also describes why Blockchain will transform not only the fundamental security of our tra...

Charles Donovan explains why it is critical for universities to develop postgraduate programmes that formally address the financial challenges and investment opportunities of climate change. Does the establishment of Imperial College's Climate Finance Centre represent greater private sector job opportunities in climate finance and strategy? What kind of curriculum can students expect to study towa...

David Wood describes the evolution of responsible investment - its approaches and institutions like the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment - over the last decade. Wood also explains why the need for a framework to economic inequality is essential in understanding the systemic risks it represents for society at large. How have the UN's Sustainable Development Goals dimen...

Dr Rachel Melsom describes why investor engagement with the tobacco industry, relative for instance to the fossil fuel industry, is futile because of its negative health and social repercussions. She also explains why international policy momentum - the WHO Tobacco Convention, the UN Global Compact Statement and the UN's Sustainable Development Goals - provide a framework to understand the broader...

Ece Ozdemiroglu explains why current accounting methodologies like Gross Domestic Product (GDP) used to measure economic and financial performance misrepresent the underlining value of our natural resources, from fisheries and forests to mineral deposits and water resources. How will natural capital accounting help us to more sustainably manage our resources over the long-term? For more informatio...

Professor Ken McPhail discusses why rights - human, political, social, labour or environmental - have historically been so difficult to define, and why the S (Social) in ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) analysis provides an opportunity to better develop accounting practices for assessing the costs of rights to society, investors and corporates. How do we begin to quantify what human righ...

Professor Mike Cho describes why South Korean corporates have historically underperformed their global peers on corporate governance metrics, and why the new administration under President Moon promises to usher in a spate of reforms in this area. What will this mean for family-run Korean conglomerates, otherwise known as chaebols? How is South Korea adopting national governance models towards the...