Opinions vary on the role of private capital in the supply of water. With appropriate guardrails, opportunities for impact, and solid returns, exist.

A stronger focus on sustainability (environmental and social) is linked to stronger financial performance - especially at the level of individual companies. The evidence is less clear that investment products marketed as ESG-aligned outperform broader market benchmarks. At least three things help explain this inconsistency.

What metrics can companies use to measure the experience of women in the workplace more consistently? We take stock of the current state of measurement by evaluating the current parties involved in reporting, and then present a suite of metrics, drawn from Wharton’s Four for Women initiative, that companies can use to collect and report.

This paper is the product of a collaboration between Dream and Impact Delta. Dream is one of Canada’s leading real estate companies, whose purpose is to deliver strong returns while delivering positive impact in the communities where it works. We advised Dream on the launch of its impact investing strategy, which is outlined here.

Growing numbers of investors believe they must understand the full financial, environmental and social impact of their decisions. What tools exist to help them? This paper, published in October 2020 and revised a year later, explores externalities in investment decision-making. While externalities are hard to measure, more progress on this question has been made than many mainstream investors realize.

Asset owners’ decisions affect people over the world, so they want to know if investment managers’ ESG efforts are serious. This post explores eight things asset owners can do to evaluate the sustainability performance their managers. We divide the checklist into two parts: things to do now, and things to form a view on over time.

An update to the 2015 meta-study of 2000 earlier articles by NYU Stern | Rockefeller looks at Leaders and Improvers | London Business School looks at ESG disclosure in private equity | Investment Metrics on diverse teams, and Fidelity on the investment results of their retail clients, by gender

A Carbon Tracker chart to show….world is off track for mitigation targets | Progress in power generation, among other places, means 4 degrees by 2100 could be a maximum | Public complacency is still a risk - as public concern may have peaked | The case for climate reparations

Flows data suggest ESG assets are stickier | US Strategic Petroleum Reserve's replenishment plan: a boon to the oil industry | The fashion industry's giant water habit | Slowing VC activity in alternative proteins

The key to EVs: sourcing key metals directly can help with traceability | The tradeoffs of divest vs. invest | Shell's partnership with ABB: 2.5 million chargers by 2030 | Tesla's plan to source EV metals directly from mines...and it's now more profitable than GM or Ford | Google's Earth Day images of Greenland over time

...and be cut by 45% by 2030 to stay sub-1.5 degrees | IPCC Working Group II: Distinctions between 'E' and 'S' can be a false dichotomy | IPCC Working Group III: "It's now or never" | Greenwashing continues? HBR article reviews work from University of Chicago, which finds high-ESG-rated mutual funds don't outperform, and an unrelated survey finds companies in ESG portfolio have worse labor and environment compliance records | Asian debt is exposed to ESG risks

ESG factors can help explain 1 in 4 potential bond downgrades says a recent study by S&P | Positive ESG ratings do not mean carbon free | Morgan Stanley study shows that bonds with rigorous sustainability targets tend to have superior price performance a month after an offering | Green real easts starts to see a "green premium"