ESG

Study: Investors Lack Tools to Monitor "Social" Impacts

March 27, 2017

Casey O’Connor and Sarah Labowitz of the NYU Stern Center on Business and Human Rights have released a study arguing that businesses must release more information on the social impacts of their operations in order to better inform investors on their efforts toward improved environmental, social, and governance (ESG) outcomes.
Canadian Companies Dispute Benchmark Rankings

March 27, 2017

An article in the Financial Post describing responses from Canadian companies disputing their low rankings in a pilot project of the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark, including for not taking into account their responses to the Benchmark's request for information, highlights company concerns with the accountability of civil society assessments of their human rights impacts.
EU Rules Push Investor Reporting on Engagement

March 24, 2017

The European Parliament has voted in favor of measures that would require shareholder participation in corporate policies such as director pay to pressure companies to look toward "long-term interests" and force institutional investors to publicly report the extent to which they engage with the companies in which they invest.
GRI Hosts Africa Workshops on Sustainability

March 23, 2017

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) recently held in Ghana the first of a series of workshops it is hosting across Africa calling on companies to use GRI's global sustainability reporting standards to demonstrate their efforts to implement the UN's business and human rights agenda.
GRI, UN "Action Platform" Pushes Companies on SDGs

March 23, 2017

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and UN Global Compact are partnering on an initiative to fulfill the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by developing an "SDGs Action Platform" that will both pressure companies to share their "best practices" in contributing to the SDG agenda and convene a global advisory group to tell companies how to report their SDG progress.
Stock Exchange Initiative Pushes Gender Reporting

March 23, 2017

The Sustainable Stock Exchanges initiative, which pressures stock exchanges around the world to contribute to the fulfillment of the UN's "sustainable development" agenda, has published a report calling on exchanges to do more to push listed companies to advance women's "economic empowerment," particularly by imposing new reporting requirements on these businesses.
Insurer Warns of Assets "Stranded" by Climate Change

March 17, 2017

The insurance company Lloyd’s of London has published a report in cooperation with researchers at the University of Oxford arguing that insurers must consider divesting from assets that will become "stranded" by government policies responding to global warming and calling for companies to participate in the development of climate policies and regulations.
SEC Reconsiders Implementation of Minerals Rule

March 15, 2017

The Acting Chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Michael Piwowar has announced that the SEC is reconsidering the implementation of a "misguided" corporate disclosure rule for the use of "conflict minerals" from war-torn areas of Africa, given the resulting boycott of some African minerals and costs imposed on legitimate mining operations.
Investors Call for G20 Phaseout of Carbon Funding

March 01, 2017

Demonstrating the expanding reach of the global climate change and sustainable development agendas, institutional investors and insurers have published a letter to the G20 group of countries calling on them to "accelerate green investment" and completely phase out fossil fuel subsidies by the year 2020.
NGO Praises French Corporate Reporting Regime

March 01, 2017

The European Coalition for Corporate Justice has praised a recently passed French law requiring large companies to disclose, on an annual basis, their efforts to address human rights impacts in their operations and those of their subsidiaries and calls for the creation of similar but stronger corporate reporting regime at the regional and global level.