As climate-related harm accelerates, economy-wide losses are increasing and posing growing risk not only to the individual companies in which shareholders invest but, significantly, to their entire portfolios. A 2018 analysis in Nature found that limiting global warming at 1.5°C versus 2°C will save $20 trillion globally by 2100. Failure to maintain warming below 2°C will cost the economy vastly more.
Read moreAlphabet / Google Needs Board Oversight Committee On Human Rights
Through its ubiquitous platforms and services, Alphabet/Google has become an influential global force that has democratized information collection and sharing, connected and empowered communities, and transformed media and entertainment. While its technologies have tremendous power and potential to benefit society, without proper oversight these same technologies and the ways that companies deploy them can cause specific human rights impacts and unintended, widespread harm.
Read moreRenewable Energy And Energy Efficiency = Clean Energy Future
Over the past several years, investors have increasingly focused on clean energy as a way for companies to mitigate climate risk and take advantage of opportunities as we transition to a low-carbon economy. In the absence of strong legislative action, corporate commitments are crucial in reaching the levels of decarbonization necessary to keep warming under 1.5°C .
Read moreVerizon Heeds Shareholder Call To Source More Renewable Energy
When Green Century first engaged Verizon Communications, the company sourced 2 percent of its energy from renewable sources—and had a goal to increase that amount to 4 percent by 2025.
Read moreThe Beverage Recycling Conundrum
The beverage container touches many industries, upstream and downstream, and presents logistical and environmental challenges at each step. ClearBridge takes a life cycle approach to the beverage container’s challenges, finding that there are several entry points for action that can reduce environmental impact.
Read moreStarbucks Signals Historic Shift From Single-Use Cups And Plastics To Reusable Packaging
An estimated eight million tons of plastics are swept into oceans annually. Plastic beverage containers are among the most common items found in beach cleanups. In 2008, Starbucks pledged that, by 2015, it would serve 25 percent of beverages in reusable containers like ceramic mugs. Ten years later, the company had little to show for its efforts, with less than 2 percent of beverages served in reusable cups.
Read moreCorporations Redefine Themselves After 50 Years Of Shareholder-Primacy
In a 1970 New York Times Magazine article, economist Milton Friedman said corporations exist solely to serve their shareholders and must maximize shareholder financial returns to the exclusion of all else. Moreover, he maintained, companies that did adopt "responsible" attitudes would be faced with more binding constraints than companies that did not, rendering them less competitive. This has been the dominant interpretation of capitalism for nearly 50 years.
Read moreA Lighter Chemical Footprint Sought For Consumer Goods, Health Care, Technology Sectors
Materiality of chemicals in products is well established in the Sustainable Accounting Standard Board’s (SASB) standards for Consumer Goods, Health Care, and Technology & Communications. These standards reflect rising demand from consumers and institutional purchasers for safer products and growing evidence of the harmful effects of toxic chemicals, including a peer-reviewed study showing that toxic chemicals cost the world 10 percent of annual global gross domestic product, $11 trillion a year in disease burdens. Yet companies in these sectors have been slow to assess and reduce the chemical footprint of their products.
Read moreRegenerative Agriculture Takes Root Among Food Manufacturers
Food manufacturers have a critical role to play in sustainable food systems. As major purchasers of commodity crops, these companies wield immense power to shift the way food is grown. Some, such as Kellogg and General Mills, are starting to use that power to drive positive change after persistent shareholder pressure.
Read moreProxy Voting Power Can Transform Company Climate Action
The power of proxy voting to transform corporate behavior is real. Through the height of the 2019 proxy voting season, shareholders had the opportunity—and responsibility—to vote on 177 shareholder resolutions addressing environmental and social issues and sustainable governance. Boston Trust Walden takes this fiduciary responsibility seriously, striving to vote on all company and shareholder proposals presented in proxy statements. Our multi-year initiative to hold asset managers we invest in accountable for thoughtfully incorporating long-term ESG considerations in their proxy voting practices remains an engagement priority.
Read more2020 Could Be Pivotal Year For Sustainability Accounting Standards
The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) was formed in 2011 to formulate social and environmental disclosure standards in line with definitions of financial materiality under U.S. securities laws. Financial materiality is a critical feature from the standpoint of mainstream investors, as many of them construe their fiduciary responsibilities to mean that any engagement or voting effort directed toward ESG issues must have monetary benefits for their customers.
Read moreProposed Rules Threaten To Obstruct Pathway To Improved ESG Disclosure And Performance
The Shareholder Rights Group is a group of leading proponents of shareholder proposals that have come together in defense of shareholder proposals under rule 14a-8. After the SEC issued its November 5, 2019 proposed changes to the rule, we examined how the proposed changes would have affected recent proposals and engagements at companies with high profile corporate responsibility challenges: Boeing, Wells Fargo and Chevron.
Read moreThe Attack On Shareholder Rights
The currently pending SEC proposals to regulate proxy advisory firms and to limit shareholder proposals together represent the biggest attack on shareholder rights by the SEC since it was created in 1934.
Read moreShareholder Proposals Provide Crucial Early Warning System For Identifying Risk
For decades, the shareholder proposal process has served as a cost-effective way for corporate management and boards to gain a better understanding of shareholder concerns, particularly those of longer-term shareholders concerned about the sustainability of the companies they own.
Read moreSEC Putting Corporate Interest Over Shareholders And Consumers
The general public has grown steadily more aware of how corporations affect people and the planet. More companies now offer “green” products and services, make their supply chains more transparent, and have sustainability departments, but there is an acute need for still greater corporate oversight.
Read moreInvestors Drive Market Forces For Progress On Antibiotics In Factory Animal Farming
The meat and poultry industries have made significant progress in tackling antibiotic resistance over the past four years, encouraged by persistent shareholder engagement on this critical issue.
Read moreShareholders, Working In Concert, Change Kinder Morgan’s Tune On Sustainability
Think back to 2014: At the 20th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP 20) in Lima, Peru, political action seemed more achievable than, perhaps, it does today. And think back to last October: Despite the COP 21 global agreement reached in Paris in 2015, the United States had declared its intention to withdraw and political action on the climate front seemed stalled.
Read moreElectric Vehicles Drive Shift To Low Carbon Economy
As companies consider how to reduce their emissions to comply with the goals of the Paris Climate Treaty, they can look to electric vehicles as a feasible option. Carbon emissions from vehicles contribute significantly to global warming, and the transportation sector is one of the larger contributors to greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in the U.S. As institutional investors seek to offset and mitigate the rising levels of carbon and other GHGs, electric vehicles (EVs) are an increasingly viable solution. With sales of EVs growing faster than predicted a few short years ago, the outlook for EV production and adoption is becoming increasingly robust.
Read moreShareholders Expand Political Disclosure And Accountability Effort As 2020 Elections Heighten Company Risks
As the 2020 campaign heats up, public companies face much greater risk from political spending. The 2018 elections provided a foretaste of what companies can expect when contributions associate them with candidates who make questionable remarks or take positions that conflict with companies’ core values and positions.
Read moreCompanies Engaged In Immigration Detention And Family Separation Face Human Rights Risks
Since mid-2017, Investors for Opioid Accountability (IOA), a coalition founded by Mercy Investment Services and the UAW Retirees Medical Benefits Trust, has become the leading shareholder force in the fight against the opioid epidemic ravaging the United States. It now represents 54 investors with more than $3.5 trillion in assets under management. In 2017, more than 70,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, the most ever in a single year. Of the 700,000 American deaths from drug overdoses since 1999, more than two-thirds were from opioids and many involved prescription opioids.
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