Climate goals: Rhetoric vs reality
A recent study by the Rainforest Action Network claims that in the five years since the Paris Agreement, the world’s biggest banks – including the likes of BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan – have financed fossil fuels to the tune of $3.8 trillion (€3.2 trillion).
Impact investment firm ThomasLloyd’s chief executive Michael Sieg, speaking in Funds Europe’s April issue, has pointed out that while large banks and global financial institutions like to highlight how sustainable they are on their websites, “the reality is unfortunately different”.
The billions of dollars committed to financing coal plants by banks and institutions that have signed up to the Paris agreement, he said, highlights the “brutal” gap between climate theory and practice.
ESG: Green, greener, greenest.
When the EU’s landmark Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) came into force on March 10, it was widely welcomed and hailed as a ‘game-changer’ in the fight against greenwashing.
A core component of the bloc’s green agenda, the regime is designed to promote greater transparency in finance – but questions remain regarding its implementation.
SFDR calls on asset managers to classify their funds according to three primary categories – article 6, which makes no claims of sustainability, or articles 8 and 9, which both claim environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials and require firms to provide data to support the claims.
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