Sustainable Investing And Environmental Markets

Environmental asset classes are not a hope for tomorrow but a reality today. This new asset category promises to grow dramatically in the 21st Century as financial analysts, investors, and corporations around the world try to find ways to profit or reduce costs while promoting environmental social benefits. Sustainable Investing and Environmental Markets: Opportunities in a New Asset Class presents a groundbreaking new way to “do well and to do good”. With a combination of over 50 years of practical experience in the field of environmental finance, Richard Sandor, Nathan Clark, Murali Kanakasabai and Rafael Marques provide a solid preliminary understanding of the promising and transformational new investment category of environmental assets. Three broad asset classes — air and water; catastrophic and weather risk; and sustainability — are covered across 12 chapters which analyze how these environmental asset classes are currently being incorporated into commodities, fixed income, and equity instruments and what the future holds for the field. Contents:A Brief Survey of Environmental Asset ClassesMarket Failures and Policy ResponsesAcid Rain Pollutants as an Asset ClassGreenhouse Gas Pollutants as an Asset ClassEmerging Geographies for Greenhouse Gas Emissions MarketsForest Carbon as an Asset ClassClean Energy Markets and Associated Asset ClassesWater Markets and Associated Asset ClassesWater Quality Trading and Its Associated Asset ClassesSustainable Fisheries Management and Its Associated Asset ClassesWeather Risks and Associated Asset ClassesSustainability and Associated Asset ClassesConclusion: You Can Put a Price on Nature Readership: Readers interested in the environment as an asset class; investors, financial analysts, policymakers, undergraduates and postgraduates of finance and economics. Key Features:There is no equivalent book in the market right now that covers environment-financial issues from a practitioner's standpointThis book combines economic theory and practical experience — making it a valuable tool for anyone who is interested in the environment as an asset class (investors, analysts, policymakers, students of finance and economics)Keywords:Environment;Emissions;Trading;Finance;Derivatives;Water;Energy;Carbon;Catastrophe;Weather;Sustainability;Fisheries;Greenhouse Gases;Sulfur Dioxide;Acid Rain;Clean Energy MarketsReviews: “A “how-to” manual for using eco-markets to save the planet … laced with deep, important history and the foresight of the truest financial and environmental market pioneer, this book tells the tale of how, with leadership, we can change the world.” Commissioner Bart Chilton US Commodity Futures Trading Commission “With this book, Dr Richard Sandor and his colleagues help bridge a critical gap between academic theory and business practice. A must-read for students, investors, policymakers, and anyone interested on the worldwide opportunities for markets to tackle pressing issues such as climate and water. An important reference piece, written by someone who has helped shape the field of environmental finance as both an academic and practitioner.” Joseph P Kenendy II Founder, Chairman, and President of Citizens Energy Corporation and Member of the US House of Representatives for Massachusetts 8th District (1987–1999) “This is a great book. Every student should read it as a freshman. It is the handbook of how different innovative approaches accelerate the creation of a sustainable future for all of us. Nature has a monetary price, and Richard Sandor and his co-authors tell you in this book how price discovery leads to environmental protection.” Alexander J B Zehnder Nayang Technological University, Singapore Former President of ETH Zurich, and a father of the concept of the “2000 Watt Society”

This book reviews the latest methods of sustainable investing and financial profit making and describes how ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) analysis can identify future business opportunities and manage risk to achieve abnormal returns. Megatrends such as climate change, sustainable development and digitalisation increase uncertainty and information asymmetry and have an impact on the future returns on investments. From a profit perspective, it is largely about how ESG factors affect the long-term value added by companies and the valuation of companies in the financial markets. Although sustainability provides an opportunity for abnormal returns, this phenomenon must be considered in a critical light. The book describes the risks and limitations associated with the accountability and availability of ESG data and tools. This book provides both academic findings and practical models for assessing the sustainability of investees and introduces practical tools and methods to make ESG analysis practice. It focuses on the ESG analysis of equity investments and fund investments in institutional investment organizations and provides a handbook for all investment analysts who are involved with investment decisions. Readers will benefit from understanding the methods, opportunities and challenges that professionals use in their ESG analysis with cases, interviews and practical tools for both institutional and private investors.

Sustainable Investing is fast becoming the smart way of generating long-term returns. With conventional investors now scrambling to factor in issues such as climate change, this book captures a turning point in the evolution of global finance. Bringing together leading practitioners of Sustainable Investing from across the globe, this book charts how this agenda has evolved, what impact it has today, and what prospects are emerging for the years ahead. Sustainable Investing has already been outperforming the mainstream, and concerned investors need to know how best to position themselves for potentially radical market change.

Sustainable Investing is fast becoming an essential method of generating long-term returns, moving beyond the negative approaches to socially responsible investing that have dominated the field. This book, our second on the subject, provides over 15 case studies of leading global investors and companies demonstrating how they successfully apply sustainability aspects to their core strategies. Learn from prominent thought leaders Dan Esty and Paul Hawken among others who have contributed key chapters. Our chapter on performance shows clearly how these strategies have been working once negative approaches are parsed out by those examining fund returns. This book also examines in great depth what data exists, and what's on the horizon, to best measure & capture sustainability successfully. Regional perspectives, including 3 chapters on Asia, and focuses on Canada, Australia, Africa & India are also included, as is a look across asset classes. Sustainable Investing, when performed with a positive perspective, has been outperforming the mainstream, unlike negative approaches designed to match benchmark returns. From eco-efficiency to sustainability-driven innovation and beyond, investors of all shapes & sizes need to know how best to position themselves for the radical market shifts underway.

This book tells the story of how the convergence between corporate sustainability and sustainable investing is now becoming a major force driving systemic market changes. The idea and practice of corporate sustainability is no longer a niche movement. Investors are increasingly paying attention to sustainability factors in their analysis and decision-making, thus reinforcing market transformation. In this book, high-level practitioners and academic thought leaders, including contributions from John Ruggie, Fiona Reynolds, Johan Rockström, and Paul Polman, explain the forces behind these developments. The contributors highlight (a) that systemic market change is influenced by various contextual factors that impact how sustainable investing is perceived and practiced; (b) that the integration of ESG factors in investment decisions is impacting markets on a large scale and hence changes practices of major market players (e.g. pension funds); and (c) that technology and the increasing datafication of sustainability act as further accelerators of such change. The book goes beyond standard economic theory approaches to sustainable investing and emphasizes that capitalism founded on more real-world (complex) economics and cooperation can strengthen ESG integration. Aimed at both investment professionals and academics, this book gives the reader access to more practitioner-relevant information and it also discusses implementation issues. The reader will gain insights into how "mainstream" financial actors relate to sustainable investing.

The vast majority of invested assets do not consider environmental, social or governance (ESG) factors. Socially responsible investing (SRI) emerged to address these challenges, but it remains largely deployed in "negative strategies" such as sector screening, and continues to be a small investment niche, largely due to perceptions about potential underperformance.Sustainable investing is a new, more positive investment construct, described as "an investment discipline that explicitly considers future social and environmental trends in financial decision making, in order to provide the best risk-adjusted and opportunity-directed returns for investors. By anticipating these trends ahead of the market, sustainable investing seeks to identify 'predictable surprises' that can help maximize value over the long term."This concise guide by one of the sector's leading experts: Disentangles the terminology around SRI and describes a new, positive, opportunities-oriented paradigm for sustainable investing Showcases funds and strategies that are delivering outperformance within ecological limitsSets out the key megatrends and scenarios which investors need to consider, and Offers a practical guide to constructing a sustainable portfolio. This is absolutely essential reading for investors, fund managers and analysts who need to get up to speed on sustainable investing.

This book provides readers with a basic understanding of sustainable finance and impact investing including history, definitions of impact, current trends and drivers, future challenges, and an overview of the key players in the global impact ecosystem. The term impact investing first appeared in 2008. Today the most commonly used definition is investing made with the intention to generate positive, measurable social and environmental impact alongside a financial return. A wide range of individual and institutional investors that have already entered the impact investment marketplace and continued growing enthusiasm can be expected given that feedback from investors indicated that portfolio performance has generally met or exceed their expectations for both social and environmental impact and financial return. Established companies have been compelled to respond to calls by institutional investors to incorporate responsible environmental, social, and governance initiatives into their business models as a condition to continued support in public capital markets. Other companies seeking to demonstrate to impact investors their commitment to environmental and social responsibility have opted for emerging forms of legal entities, so-called social enterprises, which explicitly incorporate sustainability and multi-stakeholder interests into their governance and reporting frameworks. This book provides readers with a basic understanding of sustainable finance and impact investing including history, definitions of impact, current trends and drivers, future challenges, and an overview of the key players in the global impact ecosystem. The book also describes impact investment structures and instruments, social enterprises, and impact measurement and reporting.