{"id":7555,"date":"2020-01-17T09:00:16","date_gmt":"2020-01-17T06:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=7555"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:48","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:48","slug":"the-devil-is-in-the-detail-when-it-comes-to-responsible-investing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2020\/01\/17\/the-devil-is-in-the-detail-when-it-comes-to-responsible-investing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Devil Is In The Detail When It Comes To Responsible Investing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Cecile Feront & Stephanie Bertels <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the recent flood of pledges by investors to \u201cturn up the heat\u201d on climate action<\/a>, one might think that the investment industry was in the midst of a profound shift. If only that were the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Officially, the majority of the world\u2019s institutional investors, with assets under management worth more than US$89 trillion, subscribe to the Principles for Responsible Investment<\/a>. In doing so, these companies have agreed to integrate environmental, social and governance factors into their investment processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, so far, investors\u2019 commitment to responsible investment appears to have exerted little influence<\/a> on corporate behaviour and short-term investment trends. The funding of the fossil fuel industry<\/a> continues to rise. Investment giants like BlackRock<\/a> and Vanguard<\/a> keep on voting against key climate resolutions<\/a>. Major shareholders ignore the growth of social inequalities<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even the PRI (the organisation that governs the Principles for Responsible Investment) acknowledges<\/a> that action lags behind awareness. Companies are often not accounting for risks to sustainability. Nor do they account for how they are addressing environmental, social and governance issues relating to climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Civil society organisations, academics and journalists have begun questioning whether responsible investment can bring about the level and pace of change required to enable an inclusive climate change transition. They are also highlighting the high risk of greenwashing<\/a> \u2013 when companies set ambitious climate goals but have no plans for how to get there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To better understand whether the financial industry is really shifting, we looked to South Africa, a country with a leading regulatory framework for responsible investment. Since 2011, all pension funds have been required to take a responsible investment approach as part of their fiduciary duty. A\u00a0Code for Responsible Investment in South Africa)<\/a>\u00a0was released and in 2013 it supplied practice recommendations for institutional investors and their service providers. As a result, most South African institutional investors publicly pledged their support for responsible investment. Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Cecile Feront & Stephanie Bertels With the recent flood of pledges by investors to \u201cturn up the heat\u201d on climate action, one might think that the investment industry was in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}