Environmental Sciences Seminar: Joint Briefing On Private Sector-Academic Partnerships In Sustainable Impact Investing

Selecting and managing financial assets based on social and environmental performance is undergoing rapid growth and fundamental change. Investors are increasingly pressed by asset owners to prove how one company’s practices are more or less sustainable than those of another. Yet, sustainability measures that companies declare are hardly standardized and difficult to verify, with metrics often restricted to documenting changes to internal business practices. This offers limited guidance on whether a company’s actions, products, and services promote human well-being or preserve environmental integrity. It is here where science can play an important role. Using lessons-learned through a partnership between CUNY, UBS, and PGGM, this seminar will discuss challenges and opportunities to apply science-based metrics within a decision-making framework that is useful to investors and policy planners. Beyond reliance on self-disclosed corporate reports, we ask the question: What opportunities exist for corporate and investment decision-makers to draw productively on Earth System and other sciences? Answering this question requires a more comprehensive approach to impact measurement based on a strategic alliance of asset owners and managers, companies, auditors, NGOs, and scientists.