Library | ESG issues
Environmental
The environmental pillar in ESG (environmental, social, and governance) assesses an organisation’s impact on the planet. It includes issues such as climate change, biodiversity, waste management and water management. Strong environmental practices help businesses reduce risks, comply with regulations, and drive long-term sustainability.
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Extreme heat risk governance: Framework and toolkit
This report presents a comprehensive framework and toolkit to help governments and stakeholders manage extreme heat risk. It provides actionable guidance, a maturity assessment tool, and strategies to operationalise governance and develop effective heat action plans across multiple sectors and timescales.
The State of Sustainable Finance (2025-2030) Global Architecture, Jurisdictional Approaches and Emerging Trends
This report examines global sustainable finance architecture and institutional shifts from 2025 to 2030. It assesses regulatory approaches across nine major jurisdictions, highlighting the European Union as the benchmark. The analysis identifies structural trends, including transition finance scaling, nature risk integration, and the harmonisation of sustainability reporting.
Food systems and antimicrobial resistance: Impacts on food safety, animal production and trade
This report examines the impact of antimicrobial resistance in food systems on public health, animal production, and international trade. It highlights the role of food-borne pathogens and commensal bacteria in transmitting resistance, evaluates risk analysis models, and recommends enhanced surveillance, antimicrobial stewardship, and standardisation of global trade regulations.
Aligning transition planning and financial planning: A guide for finance teams
This guidance assists finance teams in integrating transition planning into their organisation's core financial processes. It outlines steps to prepare, assess current positions, prioritise actions, and embed sustainability strategies into medium-term financial planning. The report provides practical frameworks for financing, improving decision-making, and monitoring progress towards climate resilience.
Leaning on uncertainty: Are European countries overrelying on carbon removals to reach climate targets?
This report analyses the climate strategies of six European countries and the European Commission, revealing a risky overreliance on unproven carbon dioxide removal technologies. It highlights fragmented planning, absent feasibility assessments, and policies contradicting scientific advice, warning that current approaches threaten effective climate action.
Mobilising trade associations as a force for good: A playbook for companies
This playbook outlines a five-step framework for companies to manage their indirect policy engagement through trade associations. It provides guidance on articulating science-based climate policy priorities, assessing association alignment, engaging to drive improvement, and rigorously reviewing memberships to ensure they support corporate sustainability targets.
Corporate Engagement Guide: Addressing Deforestation in Australia
This corporate engagement guide provides institutional investors with a step-by-step pathway to address deforestation within Australia's largest listed supermarkets and banks. It evaluates the current progress of major companies and offers actionable guidance to implement robust deforestation-free commitments, safeguard financial stability, and mitigate systemic economic risks.
Fiscal policy and transition risk
This report uses an environmental dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to analyse how climate policies interact with pre-existing labour and capital taxes. It finds that transition risks depend on policy design, financing choices, and financial frictions, highlighting critical differences between carbon taxes and abatement subsidies.
Flood risk, insurance, and housing in the United States
This research provides household-level estimates of flood risk exposure across socioeconomic groups in the US. It reveals that high-income households own a disproportionate share of floodplain property wealth, whilst a vulnerable subset of low-income, uninsured homeowners faces severe financial risks from flood damage and rising insurance premiums.
Pipe dreams: How oil and gas fail to deliver economic development in Africa
This 2026 report analyses the economic impact of oil and gas extraction across 13 African nations. Finding that fossil fuels exacerbate poverty, vulnerability, and corruption rather than delivering sustained growth, it advocates for a rapid, just transition to decentralised renewable energy to ensure future economic stability and development.
A systematic review of the voluntary governance landscape for an urgent, high-integrity, and equitable transition to net zero
This systematic review analyses 36 voluntary governance documents to assess how well they guide non-state entities towards an urgent, high-integrity, and equitable net-zero transition. It identifies consensus areas, like science-based targets, alongside critical gaps in operational detail, equity, and accountability, highlighting the need for robust standards and regulation.
Planetary solvency: Tipping into the wild unknown: Global nature risk management
This report outlines how the degradation of global ecosystems threatens societal and economic resilience. It highlights immediate risks to food systems and health, long-term ecosystem tipping points, and the necessity of integrating biodiversity into financial models. Actuaries and policymakers are urged to adopt systemic, narrative-based risk management strategies.
Underwriting the future of resilience: Developing insurable and bankable infrastructure
This report explores how the insurance industry assesses physical climate risks for new social infrastructure projects. It identifies five key enablers to integrate climate resilience across project lifecycles, advocating for early stakeholder engagement and forward-looking risk assessments to ensure long-term asset insurability, bankability, and value in a changing climate.
Value of nature: The investment case for nature-based solutions
This report examines how Ecosystem Service Valuation (ESV) can scale finance for Nature-based Solutions (NbS). By revealing the distribution of socio-economic benefits and costs across stakeholders, ESV provides a standardised framework to inform financial mechanisms and structure effective public-private partnerships.
Catalysing partnerships to mobilise infrastructure financing and investment in low- and middle-income countries
This learning note explores how an ecosystem approach to infrastructure financing can mobilise capital in low- and middle-income countries. It highlights the importance of early finance engagement, de-risking mechanisms, and integrated partnerships to transform technically sound projects into commercially viable investments.
Integrating climate considerations into environmental impact assessments: Lessons from Latin America and Asia
This report analyses the integration of climate change considerations into environmental impact assessment (EIA) regimes across 20 economies in Latin America and Asia. It evaluates legislative frameworks and climate litigation trends, recommending stronger statutory requirements, detailed technical guidance, and comprehensive assessments of both emissions and adaptation risks.