News
- Natural Capital Declaration open to signatures
The Natural Capital Declaration is open for endorsement by CEOs of financial institutions - banks, institutional investors, asset managers and (re)insurers. Other parties, including governments, corporations, NGOs, and other civil society members, are can 'support' this declaration.
Our Work
The UNEP FI Investment Commission comprises of leading institutional investors and investment managers committed to systematically considering environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues in their business principles, strategies and operations.
In addition to all UNEP FI investment signatories, the Investment Commission house two highly successful UNEP FI investment working groups: the Asset Management Working Group (AMWG, since 2003) and the Property Working Group (PWG, since 2007).
With the increasing recognition of global, long-term and systemic ESG risks in the public and private domains, holistic risk management, responsible investment and ownership, accountability and transparency are now more relevant than ever. The AMWG and the PWG’s complementary work on fiduciary responsibility and ESG materiality across asset classes provide a solid foundation for greater action.
Current Projects
Here is a selection of the projects on investment that the UNEP FI Investment Commission is currently implementing:
- Trustee training on the investment implications of climate change risks and resilience - In World Economic Forum’s Global Risks 2011 report, climate change risk was ranked as the number one global systemic risk with huge potential cost impact. As noted in UNEP FI’s reports on fiduciary responsibility, trustees are duty-bound to ensure that they query their asset managers as to how current and future risks are being managed. This training programme will empower trustees to ask the right questions on climate risk and resilience.
- Investor disclosure project – Measuring and disclosing the carbon footprint of investment funds - As investor awareness on the materiality of climate change increases, a growing number of investment institutions are measuring the ‘carbon footprint’ of their funds for purposes of internal analysis and client communication. However, as this issue moves up the agenda, there is no authoritative guidance, or indeed standards, on how investment institutions should conduct and communicate this analysis. As a result, the Asset Management Working Group and Climate Change Working Group have jointly launched this new initiative to consolidate best practice and lay the foundations for robust assessments in the future.
- Corporate governance, sustainability and succession planning - This project is aimed at illuminating the connections between good governance, sustainable management, and succession planning. We plan to examine the state of the art in linking sustainability with succession planning, and outlining a series of best practices in assuring that sustainability initiatives are not orphaned as a result of the departure of a single senior manager.
- Environmental Metrics for property investment performance - Investors, environmentalists and policy-makers need more and better information to fully understand the environmental performance of the current built stock, increase their understanding of how environmental and investment performance are linked, and to measure the effectiveness of actions taken.
- Financing mechanisms for EE retrofit in commercial and residential buildings - This project is aimed at exploring the drivers of EE retrofit financing and investing market. The project will provide insight on the landscape of existing financing mechanism and models for commercial and residential buildings EE retrofit, what factors that drive such investment into EE retrofit, potential for scale-up and replicability, existing barriers, and what policies can help bring down these barriers to unlock capital for financing EE solutions in buildings at scale.
Contact
Jacinto Coello
investment [at] unepfi.org
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