We want to keep you informated about all things ESG, reporting and responsible investment

The United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI) is a set of six investment principles that incorporates ESG into investment decisions. The commitments are voluntary options that an investor can take to aim their investment strategies to match with broader societal objectives.

Significant industry changes mean that strong ESG practices have become a must-have rather than a nice-to-have for corporations to attract investors' dollars. Investors are increasingly taking a magnifying glass to everything from environmental impact and employee health to cybersecurity and supply chains. Many companies are underprepared, both in terms of managing this data but also because of outdated processes and understaffed teams.

We had the pleasure of speaking with Indranil Ghosh, CEO of Tiger Hill Capital and author of Powering Prosperity. Indranil gave us valuable insights into economic development, sustainability, and other key topics in ESG. “I started off with a passion for technology, a passion for science. My graduate and undergraduate work was in chemical engineering and I did a PhD at MIT looking at polymers and how to control their properties in industrial situations.”

The Nossa Data team is excited to welcome Anuj A. Shah, a Managing Director at KKS Advisors as our first advisor. Anuj shares why he is excited to become an advisor to Nossa: There is still so much work that has to be done in the field. Specifically, we see and hear from our corporate clients how much pain they are encountering when it comes to ESG reporting.

We created a visual map of key terms relating the Covid-19 pandemic with ESG during March 2020. Zooming back a few months to the pre-coronavirus bull-market world, major business leaders and investors worldwide were announcing their commitment to responsible capital in increasingly large numbers, has this stayed consistent post Covid? Check our our data.

In order to map the raw social media graph to ESG keywords, we analysed the hashtags we have found (the nodes) and we grouped hashtags together by topics, using topic classification and spell checking techniques to clean up the raw data. We then displayed a graph of coalesced tags, where all tags falling under the same topic are coalesced into one node, e.g. #coronavirus, #covid19, #coronaoutbreak, #fightcovid19 would all fall under the topic Coronavirus.

Alune Aqua is a startup based in Indonesia that is improving the aquaculture industry by offering loans that meet the needs of farmers. Shrimp farming in Indonesia is a $4 billion industry employing over 3 million people, yet it is an industry, which has been slow to adopt technology, and financial loan terms do not meet the needs of farmers. Alune is making shrimp farming more efficient and sustainable by offering loans that meet the needs of farmers and enable new technologies and improvements on farms, whilst offering investors access to an SDG aligned asset class.

We are mapping the ESG policies of the world's largest asset managers. What do the different players want to see when they perform fundamental analysis? We started by looking at the UN Principles for Responsible Investment signatory list, The Climate Action 100+ signatory list and the supporters lists for SASB and TCFD aligned reporting.

Make My Money Matter (MMMM) has announced today, June 30th, they are launching a movement calling for the trillions of pounds invested in UK pensions to build a better world. The people-powered campaign is fighting for a world where we know where our money goes. A world where we demand that the financial system transforms to put people and the planet on par with profit.

The IMP+ACT Alliance is a public-good technology initiative, sponsored by the City of London Corporation, Deutsche Bank and the Impact Management Project. Strategic partners, among others, including the UK Impact Investing Institute, Toniic and the Make My Money Matter campaign. The goal: Allow investment practitioners to better understand the social and environmental impacts of investments by providing a technology solution that supports efforts to assess, measure and manage these impacts.

Since 2008, nearly 700 billion US dollars have been invested by venture capital rounds in the US alone. Much of this capital went into building innovative, high-growth companies such as Airbnb, Uber, WeWork, and Salesforce.The great thing about venture capital funding is that it enabled thousands of innovators to build their products and solve real problems, while creating thousands of jobs and some of the world’s highest valued companies.

The jury is in, we need to reduce our carbon footprint as society and many corporations are stepping up to play their part. This article looks at 5 companies who have made pledges to reduce their carbon emissions: Microsoft, Sainsbury, Shell, Starbucks and Ørsted.

SRI stands for Socially Responsible Investing. This term can also be referred to as social investment, ethical investment, responsible investment or sustainable investment. SRI investing refers to an investment strategy which considers both financial return and wider positive social and environmental impacts. Socially responsible investments can be made directly into individual companies or via socially conscious mutual funds or exchange-traded-funds (ETF).

In August 2019 the Business Roundtable issued an open letter titled “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation.” This announcement was signed by 181 CEOs of America’s largest organizations. These CEOs have committed to lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders: Customers, employees, suppliers, communities and shareholders.

For many wealth is a symbol of financial status, a term defined by an individual’s monetary worth. In fact, the word ‘wealth’ comes from the old English ‘weal’ which means ‘wealth, welfare, and wellbeing'. Weal is in turn related to the older word ‘wel’ meaning ‘in a state of good fortune, welfare or happiness’. At some point in the last few hundred years, most of the world has forgotten that wealth once meant well-being and happiness.

Raising capital as a start-up is hard. For every successful “XYZ start-up raised $2 million” headline on TechCrunch, there are hundreds, if not thousands of companies who failed. For an impact focused start-up, the fundraising journey can be even more challenging. Not only does the company need to find investors, they also need to find those that believe in making a wider impact beyond that of pure financial return.

The Impact Investing Institute is launching at a particularly propitious time. There is growing awareness of the urgent need for more capital to address social challenges in the UK and elsewhere, and to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. At the same time, more and more people want to use their pensions and savings in a way that benefits society and the environment, as well as making a financial return.

We hear a lot about impact investment but what exactly does “Impact” mean. Oxford Dictionary defines impact as: “A marked effect or influence, to have a strong effect on someone or something.” Unfortunately, many impact or mission-driven businesses and impact investors struggle to correctly report on that impact.

The US farmland investment market is extremely fragmented because over 70% of properties are under five thousand acres. While five thousand acres may sound like a lot, it can be too small of a deal size for major institutional investors. Around 10-15 years ago a few major institutions decided to allocate large amounts of capital to farmland. They accomplished this through insurance companies as insurance companies already had experience investing in farmland.

We are mapping the responsible investment ecosystem. We are bringing together a list of the major industry players, terminology and educational resources. By mapping the responsible investment ecosystem, we aim to make it easy to stay informed about the industry. See how all of the key industry players come together.

The agriculture industry is essential for our day to day lives. However, while it is key to providing sustenance through our food supply, it also contributes to ongoing global climate change. Anyone familiar with climate change knows that our food system has burdened the earth with a meaningful carbon footprint. Unsustainable farming practices are responsible for 80% of tropical deforestation, adding more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than all the world’s cars and trucks combined.

As the financial and investment sectors continue a rapid shift towards impact investing, as public conscience and political awareness demand change - this paradigm shift has opened up the market for a new type of business, the investment wholesaler. Impact Group fills that gap.

Carbon Tracker was set up 10 years ago as an independent financial think tank focused on the impact of the energy transition on financial markets. Kingsmill Bond has been a New Energy Strategist for the firm for the last two years. At Carbon Tracker he has written about the impact of the energy transition on financial markets, domestic politics and geopolitics. He has also authored a series of reports on the myths of the energy transition, looking at the many arguments made by incumbents to deny the reality of change.

We first conceived of Artisan & Fox when our founder Jaron was working in Nepal in the summer of 2015 with a non-profit, assisting in earthquake relief. An earthquake has just struck the country, and many artisans were struggling to make ends meet. The artisans’ main source of income were tourists, and after the earthquake, there was none.

Everlane focuses on long lasting clothing that was produced in an ethical manner. The brand emphasizes that they spend months finding the best factories around the world. Each factory is given a compliance audit to evaluate factors like fair wages, reasonable hours, and environment. Their goal? A score of 90 or above for every factory. On top of this, the brand believes in radical transparency for their pricing. Each item shows the price to make and the price it was sold at.

Talent is equally distributed (50% in urban and 50% in non-urban areas) but opportunities are not. Talent in urban areas has far better access to work opportunities. Invide is an invite-only community for tech talent from such remote areas.We discover talent from remote areas, coach them for productivity in remote work environment, connect them with world-class work opportunities and make sure they succeed and sustain in this new environment.

The food industry takes a major toll on the environment, from the staggering amount of resources required in production and distribution, to the CO2 emissions from waste in landfills. It is estimated that 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted along the value chain worldwide. The biggest cause of this waste is overproduction, non-compliance with industry standards and best-before dates. Take a look at some of the start-ups leading the way to reduce food waste.

The Cloverly API will calculate real time carbon offset costs for various scenarios during e-commerce check-out flows such as shipping. Cloverly, which can be integrated directly into checkout experiences, allows customers the option to pay slightly extra as a means to offset their carbon footprint. That premium paid will be used by Cloverly to purchase wind + solar energy credits on the customers behalf. Companies can pick whether they pay the carbon offset price or provide it as an option for customers to pay.

Women have largely been left out of medical innovation. In fact, until 1993, researchers banned women from participating in [early] clinical trials, as it was believed female hormone fluctuations polluted medical data. To this day, most medications, including those for pain relief, depression and sleeping aids, have not been tested on women. We’re redefining localised cramp-relief, relying on an ingredient that we’ve tested on women first.

Kombucha is a drink that’s been brewed for generations in Asia, probably originating in China (although nobody knows exactly — the recipes have been passed down for centuries!). It’s famous for having a host of properties which are believed to help rebalance and detoxify the body, and particularly the gut.