AFME: ‘Financial materiality is not sustainable finance’s end goal’
In conversation with Richard Peers for Finextra TV, Tonia Plakhotniuk, associate director, policy (sustainable finance & financial reporting) at the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) traverses a number of predications we can expect to see around sustainable finance in 2021.
Bloomberg Green: Making Finance Sustainable
Jul.30 — Money is flooding into sustainable finance at a pace that has never been seen before. But, as companies and countries pump cash into climate projects, how can we differentiate the change-makers from the profit-takers? In this edition of “Bloomberg Green” we break down the institutions trying to define what makes sustainable investments ‘green’. Plus, we talk to the CEO of European private equity house EQT about a world-first: a bond issuance linked to sustainable goals where failure to meet targets means a bigger payout for investors.
Sustainable Finance: Risks & Policy
Dr Paul Fisher (Fellow, Cambridge University Institute for Sustainability Leadership) and Terry Heymann (CFO, World Gold Council) discussed what sustainability means and the importance of ESG. Paul considered how we should think about the risks and opportunities sustainability presents to the financial sector, before looking at how regulators globally are responding to those risks.
Terry presented WGC’s findings on climate change, tracking gold’s carbon footprint through the supply chain, and considered how reducing this footprint can benefit the mining and investment industries.
AFME S&P Webinar Panel discussion ‘What does the future hold for Sustainable Securitisation’
Materiality Assessment Is an Art, Not a Science: Selecting ESG Topics for Sustainability Reports
Materiality assessments play an important role in helping firms to select the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) topics to include in their sustainability report. This article presents the six main steps of materiality assessments, the methods used, and how the complexity, uncertainty, and evaluative nature of sustainability issues complicate them. This article draws two conclusions: the selected materiality perspective influences how the other steps are conducted, and assessment results should not only focus on selecting win-win scenarios, but also on “tensioned topics,” which indicate material societal impact but lack a business case.
Based on the article: “Materiality Assessment Is an Art, Not a Science: Selecting ESG Topics for Sustainability Reports” by Jilde Garst, Karen Maas, and Jeroen Suijs
Read the full article:
https://doi.org/10.1177/00081256221120692
California Management Review
Volume 65, Issue 1 (Fall 2022)
https://cmr.berkeley.edu/browse/issues/65_1/
Video production: David Salisbury