Sustainable Investing
Book by Herman Bril, Georg Kell, and Andreas Rasche (2021)
Georg Kell is Chairman of Arabesque (an ESG/sustainable quant fund manager) and founding Director of the United Nations Global Compact; Herman Bril is CEO of Asset Management at Arabesque with over 25 years of international finance experience; and Andreas Rasche is Professor of Business in Society at the Centre for Sustainability at Copenhagen Business School.
Sustainable Investing is a collection of essays from over 30 expert contributors spanning high-level practitioners and academic thought leaders. The book is aimed at investors, business leaders, and academics who want to explore how sustainable investing is changing global markets, the limitations within the current system, and how to expedite change. The book argues we must ‘let go of Milton Friedman’ with greater urgency, shift away from business-as-usual, and drive rapid collective action if we want to avoid breaching planetary boundaries and climate disaster.
The contributors take a deep dive into the role of ‘Environmental, Social, Governance’ (ESG) and the many principles, frameworks and standards this covers. The book illustrates how the intersection of corporate sustainability and sustainable investment has pushed ESG into the mainstream and how this is rapidly changing global markets. However, the book also demonstrates that a lack of long-term thinking, a lack of systems thinking, and a lack of global governance is holding back more meaningful change.
To address these systemic issues ‘Sustainable Investing’ argues that data and technology can play a big role in better assessing and monitoring sustainable business practices and investments - and the need for not just more data but greater transparency and comparability. It also illustrates the need for more supportive policy to cut through the complexity in order to standardise and streamline sustainable investing, and how fostering collaboration between science, economics, financial markets, and business can expedite change.
I found this title extremely useful in piecing together the many frameworks, initiatives, and standards in the sustainable investment sphere whilst also providing a critical look at what works, what doesn’t and what needs to change. Recommended reading for anyone interested in corporate and investor action on climate and how we mobilise the $70+ trillion required to reach Net-Zero over the coming decades.
*Cover image from Shutterstock
Not a climate change book but an important read for anyone interested in how to objectively evaluate information and make more accurate predictions about the future.