Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:01 Welcome to the Refinitiv Sustainability Perspectives Podcast, where we share examples of leadership and innovation. Small entrepreneurial businesses, large mega corporations, and all types of enterprises in between are seeing a global shift in perspectives around the role of business in society. From E S G investing to sustainable finance, to social impact in our communities, we're on a journey to leverage data and intelligence to make the best business decisions possible. Enjoy the podcast.
Speaker 1 00:00:37 Hi everyone. Welcome to the Definitive Sustainability Perspectives podcast. This is Kesa Shrine, and today we are celebrating the conclusion of our show's first season, and we're so happy you've been along for the ride. You know, these past few months we've spoken to business leaders from a range of diverse industries to explore the world's biggest E S G challenges, but we also learned about what many industries are doing right and that's very important and why it's so essential to invest in sustainability and governance. Now, after all, we live in a challenging time. Extreme forest fires, droughts and storms have doubled since 1980. This year, the Arctic reached near record heat once again and more companies are starting to react to the climate crisis. In fact, according to definitives E S G data, 63% of companies now have a plan to reduce emissions. Now, that's up 56% from the last five years, and almost 70% of companies have a waste reduction initiative.
Speaker 1 00:01:47 But there's no doubt the business world still has a long way to go when it comes to meeting environmental metrics. And while we're at it, diversity and other sustainability metrics as well. So what did our guests have to say during this first season? How does the private sector need to move forward in the ESG space? On this final episode of season one, we're going to take a look at their top takeaways. Let's head back to the very first episode of the podcast. We explored how the investment landscape is changing to favor sustainability and really why E S G investing is now such an integral part of successful financial strategies. We got the opportunity to speak with Nikita Single, the co-head of Sustainable Investment and E S G at Lazard Asset Management, and that's a firm that manages more than 200 billion US dollars. Nikita reminded us that the investors need to be thinking about whose money they're actually managing.
Speaker 1 00:02:47 Oftentimes, it's the money of endowments, schools, foundations, and families, and they wanna see their money managed responsibly. According to Nikita, climate change and inequality have really transformed into financial issues. It's an investor's job to take this into consideration. Companies also need to consider what communities around them expect of them. That's what we heard this season from Dan Estee, a professor of environmental Law and policy at Yale University. We learned that sustainable companies need to be focusing on a much larger set of stakeholders. Doing business isn't just about pleasing investors. Our company's board and one way to do this can be focusing on E S G metrics. Now, Dan believes the challenge here is that there's no clear set of guidelines on E S G metrics for everyone to follow. This can make it hard to do comparisons across companies. Now, there's also a huge financial incentive for investors to allocate their funds to sustainable companies.
Speaker 1 00:03:53 So not only is an investor decarbonizing their portfolio better for the environment, they're also driving significant alpha too. This is according to a study by State Street Associates and Harvard Business School. We spoke with the study's co-author, Bridget Real Muto Lala. To learn more, she told us that the most aggressive carbon strategies resulted in the strongest alpha over time across Europe. This meant choosing the best firm within a market to invest in. Alphas were stronger in Europe in general, since the market is highly regulated. For example, Europe holds the EU emissions trading system R EU E T S last year. It also committed to achieving climate neutrality by 2050, which has been the largest effort to date in moving businesses towards sustainability. We've talked about climate and sustainability in general. Now let's move to something a bit more specific. The UN's SDGs are sustainable development goals.
Speaker 1 00:04:56 These are a list of 17 goals, which are all interconnected and designed to beat global challenges like poverty, hunger, and unfit drinking water by 2030. Yep, the goals are quite ambitious, but the world does have enough money to reach them. It would take 4.5 trillion per year. According to our guests, Julia Walker, head of sustainability and risk at Refinitiv. Private companies really need to step up to help meet those goals, be it through financing. Big infrastructure projects are building technology to solve sustainable challenges. To learn more, check out Julia's new book, sustainable Development Goals, harnessing Business to Achieve the SDGs through finance, technology and law reform. We heard another great takeaway from guest Cheryl McKissick, Daniel, that supporting diversity and inclusion can lead to profit. Cheryl is the president and c e O of McKissick and McKissick, which is the product of the oldest African American owned construction company in the us.
Speaker 1 00:06:06 Can you believe they started in 1790? More creative ideas from people with different perspectives can increase the bottom line, she said, but customers and businesses also need to seek out firms mastering diversity to help expand the talent pool and create more competition within the construction industry. Employee resource groups are, ERGs are one of the most important elements that can bring about change in this space in 2020. ERGs are employee driven groups that foster diversity and inclusion in organizations, and their purpose is to give voice to underrepresented groups, support employees in making commercial impact and build compassionate communities. And lastly, we learned about sustainability in Africa from our guests, Jackie Kean and Cita Nash Carter. They are two principles at Bright Insights Global. A women owned consultancy based in Cape Town. Africa holds six of the world's 10 fastest growing economies. Jackie and CDA told us that because of this, there is a great opportunity for leaders to invest in Africa, especially in sustainable businesses.
Speaker 1 00:07:18 For example, the industries attracting the most investment include FinTech, ad tech, mobile technology, and textile production. Additionally, the founders of Bright Insights Global say investors need to focus on products that contribute to society and not solely products that contribute to business revenues. It's important to value the talent that's there and then help this talent to grow. We learned so much in season one of the definitive sustainability Perspectives podcast from how investors should decarbonize their portfolios. Why E S G is so important to all business stakeholders, investment across Africa and much more. I'd like to give a big fantastic, wonderful, spectacular thank you to our creative director, margarita Lock Tennova and Anna two, our founder at the Definitive Sustainability Prospectives podcast. I'm your host and executive producer Kesa Shreen. If you haven't had a chance to listen to all the episodes, go back and take a listen now <laugh>. And if you like the show, please do rate us on Apple Podcasts. We always appreciate your feedback. We will be back with a new season in January. But until then, we wish you a happy and sustainable holiday season. We invite you to subscribe to the Definitive Sustainability Perspectives Podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you stream your, what did you think about the podcast? Leave us a review on iTunes or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter for updates on our show. Thank you for joining. See you next time.
