sustainability Archives

UN Climate Change Agreement signed this week

The United Nations (UN) held a ceremony at its headquarters in New York for countries to formally sign up to the climate change agreement that was made in Paris at the end of last year. The Paris Agreement enters into …

Shareholders call for companies to respond to environmental concerns

Investors vote on the first of three shareholder resolutions proposed at Rio Tinto, Anglo American and Glencore AGMs this week calling for reporting by these mining companies into how they are managing carbon emissions and investing in low-carbon energy research …

Financial Disclosures Task Force outlines its approach to climate change

The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures set up by the Financial Standards Board has outlined the principles and objectives for its work. In its first report the Task Force said that despite a range of initiatives the existing climate-related …

Survey of American institutional investors finds low take up of ESG criteria in investment decisions

There is a low rate of adoption of environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria in investment decisions among North American institutional investors according to a survey conducted by OFI Global Asset Management and Pensions & Investments.

The survey found that …

SEC says Exxon and Chevron must accept climate change shareholder proposals at annual meetings

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has ruled that oil giants, ExxonMobil and Chevron, need to include shareholder proposals at their AGMs requesting information on the impact on their businesses of the policies on reducing carbon emissions and responding …

Fund management mandates should include ESG criteria

The United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) initiative has launched a report, How Asset Owners Can Drive Responsible Investment: Beliefs, Strategy and Mandates, calling on asset owners to do more to reflect ESG risks and opportunities in their …

ShareAction judges autoenrolment sustainability credentials

As automatic-enrolment workplace pensions are rolled out to more employees UK pressure group, ShareAction, which campaigns to achieve ‘an investment system that truly serves savers and communities, and protects our environment for the long term’, has produced its first …

UK boards start to take values and ethics more seriously

Audit committees are increasingly overloaded and UK companies are looking at other way to monitor corporate responsibility (CR) and sustainability issues, according to a report published by the Institute of Business Ethics (IBE).

An IBE survey of the FTSE 350 …

UK consults on EU Non-Financial Reporting Directive

The UK government is consulting on how to incorporate the EU’s Non-Financial Reporting Directive into UK law and into the UK’s current company reporting framework. This amends an earlier directive and requires companies, with more than 500 employees, to disclose …

FTSE 350 analysis: Environmental reporting still evolving

Most companies in the UK’s FTSE350 have met the requirements of the recent changes to the Companies Act to report more fully on environmental matters and to report on Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions within their annual reports and accounts, according …