This report summarises recommendations from Canada’s Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance to mobilise private capital for low-carbon, resilient growth: improve market clarity and standards (incl. TCFD), build national climate data (C3IA), and develop financing solutions such as green and transition instruments, infrastructure investment, and building retrofits, supported by enabling policy.

This report summarises legal opinions by Noel Hutley SC and Sebastian Hartford Davis for the Centre for Policy Development, concluding that Australian company directors must assess, disclose and manage foreseeable climate risks. It highlights growing regulatory and investor expectations, making climate oversight a key element of directors’ duties and liability exposure.

This report summarises global sustainable investment trends from 2016 to 2018, noting a 34 per cent increase to USD 30.7 trillion. Japan saw the fastest growth, while Europe remained the largest market. The leading strategies were ESG integration, exclusionary screening, and shareholder engagement across major investment regions.

This report summarises evidence that humanity has exceeded the planetary boundary for novel entities, including chemicals and plastics. It finds that their production and emissions are increasing faster than global capacity for risk assessment and regulation, thereby threatening Earth system stability and requiring urgent action to reduce production and releases.

This study examines the evolution of sustainability reporting in the Netherlands, showing how moral intentions of corporate responsibility became standardised and financialised. Through commensuration, sustainability shifted from ethical values to measurable economic indicators, leading to a “crowding out of morality” as reporting prioritised comparability, performance, and investor relevance over genuine moral purpose.

This report summarises principles for developing a wellbeing-focused federal budget in Australia. It recommends integrating wellbeing goals into policy and budgeting, strengthening data and accountability, investing in long-term and preventative analysis, enhancing public service capability, and ensuring ongoing community engagement to guide decision-making and measure progress.

This report proposes using firm-level emission futures contracts to better measure and incentivise real environmental impact from ESG investing. It finds that current backward-looking ESG ratings fail to predict emission reductions and may misallocate capital to higher-polluting firms. Market-based, forward-looking emission futures could improve measurement, incentives, and investment impact.

This paper, “ESG: A Panacea for Market Power?” by Philip Bond and Doron Levit (2024), examines how firms’ social (“S”) ESG policies affect market competition. It finds that moderate ESG actions such as fairer treatment of workers or customers can reduce market power and improve welfare, while overly aggressive policies harm both firms and stakeholders. The authors show that competition in ESG policies among socially minded firms can deliver efficient, welfare-maximising outcomes, linking ESG adoption to market structure, corporate governance models, and executive incentives.

This report by Roots of Impact (2024) reviews eight years of experience implementing Impact-Linked Finance (ILF), a structuring approach that rewards measurable social or environmental outcomes by linking financial terms to impact performance. It outlines ILF’s evolution, design principles, effectiveness benchmarks, and opportunities to scale through collaboration and new impact-linked instruments.

The report introduces the concept of Regenerative Good Growth (RGG) as an alternative to extractive GDP-focused models. It argues that economic progress should regenerate five renewable capitals, natural, social, human, cultural, and sustainable physical, while ensuring fairness, engagement, and reduced environmental harm. RGG promotes inclusive, low-carbon, and nature-positive transitions through diverse public participation.

This report summarises over 1,000 studies (2015–2020) and finds that most show a positive relationship between ESG and financial performance. ESG integration and long-term strategies tend to enhance returns and risk management, while disclosure alone has limited financial impact.

This report summarises private shareholder engagements in Japan by Governance for Owners Japan between 2009 and 2019. Findings show high success rates and positive abnormal returns, with quiet activism proving more effective than public campaigns. Evidence indicates such private engagements support Japan’s governance reforms and long-term shareholder value.

This report summarises research on US firms’ exposure to temperature variability and its financial effects. It shows that volatile temperatures reduce profitability, affect consumer demand and labour productivity, and influence investor attention. Portfolios exposed to higher variability underperform, indicating temperature volatility is a material climate risk for firms and investors.

This report summarises empirical evidence on the economic effects of disclosure and financial reporting regulation. It reviews challenges in identifying causal relationships, assessing costs and benefits, and evaluating market-wide outcomes. The authors highlight limited conclusive evidence and propose priorities for future research to better inform policy and regulatory design.

This report summarises how policy portfolios support long-term, multigenerational investment planning by balancing strategic discipline with tactical flexibility. It presents model portfolios for institutional and ultra-high-net-worth clients, emphasising client-specific customisation, risk management, and the integration of long-term capital market assumptions to guide portfolio construction and decision-making.

This report summarises research comparing the effectiveness of “exit” strategies, such as divestment and boycotts, with “voice” strategies, such as shareholder engagement, in influencing corporate behaviour. It concludes that when most investors are even slightly socially responsible, engagement leads to socially optimal outcomes, whereas exit rarely does and can reduce welfare.