Library | ESG issues
Greenwashing
Greenwashing refers to the misleading practice of overstating or falsely presenting an organisation’s environmental or sustainability efforts. It can involve deceptive marketing, incomplete disclosures, or exaggerated claims about products and corporate practices. In finance, greenwashing undermines ESG credibility, leading to reputational damage, legal risks, and loss of investor trust. Strengthening transparency and accountability is essential to ensure capital supports truly sustainable initiatives and maintains market integrity.
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Adaptbase Search
Adaptbase Search is an AI-powered knowledge base that structures climate adaptation data from global city plans. It allows finance professionals to track urban resilience investments, benchmark city responses to climate hazards, and verify adaptation claims through a standardised knowledge graph of actions and outcomes.
Greenwashing as aspirational signaling: From burden to benefit?
This research analyses the transition of sustainability disclosures from voluntary practices to mandatory legal frameworks in the US and EU. It examines the 'greenwashing enforcement gap' and argues that aspirational signalling, despite inaccuracies, can drive institutional change and attract a prosocial workforce to improve corporate conduct.
Guidance for voluntary climate change mitigation
This guidance outlines expectations for voluntary climate change mitigation in New Zealand. It details six core principles for high-integrity carbon credits, including additionality and permanence. It distinguishes between contribution and exclusive-use claims and clarifies the role of the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme and Nationally Determined Contributions.
Annual sustainable investment asset owner survey series
This benchmark series examines global asset owner attitudes and approaches to sustainable investment. It tracks adoption levels, thematic priorities, and perceived barriers across diverse regions and asset classes. The research provides factual insights into how sustainability factors are integrated into core investment practices, aiding portfolio construction and risk management.
Limited impacts of shareholder pressure on climate strategy of fossil firms
This research examines shareholder pressure on US fossil fuel firms’ climate strategies. Using NLP to analyse 10-K filings and SEC regulatory changes, it finds limited impact on substantive reforms. Firms often employ symbolic disclosures or procedural tactics to resist decarbonisation, suggesting that mandatory policy is required for transition.
Faire Fonds Database
The Faire Fonds Database is a screening tool from Facing Finance and urgewald that analyses thousands of retail funds for controversial holdings. It identifies exposure to sectors like fossil fuels and weapons while highlighting potential greenwashing in ESG-labelled products.
What do sustainability disclosures disclose?
This research analyses over 15,000 sustainability disclosures from Russell 3000 firms. It finds that while reporting has surged since 2015, informative quality has declined. Adoption of voluntary standards yields mixed results, correlating with reduced 'fluff' but lower narrative specificity. Improvements primarily reflect selection effects rather than organisational learning.
Seeing the goal, missing the truth: Human accountability for AI bias
Research demonstrates that Large Language Models exhibit purpose-conditioned bias when informed of downstream tasks. Goal-aware prompting leads to in-sample overfitting and inflated performance before knowledge cutoffs. Results indicate that disclosing objectives compromises neutrality, necessitating the separation of measurement and evaluation in AI-assisted workflows to ensure statistical validity.
ICMA's guidance handbooks series
This guidance series provides a comprehensive set of questions and answers regarding the application of the Green Bond Principles, Social Bond Principles, Sustainability Bond Guidelines, and Sustainability-Linked Bond Principles. It serves as a benchmark series for the sustainable bond market, promoting transparency and standardisation across various financial debt instruments.
Environmental claims, climate promises, and ‘greenwashing’ by meat and dairy companies
This research examines environmental claims from 33 major meat and dairy companies. It finds that 98% of 1,233 identified claims constitute greenwashing. While most claims are climate-related, many are unverifiable future promises lacking scientific evidence. The industry’s sustainability reporting often mimics tactics used by the fossil fuel sector.
The emancipatory potential of biodiversity reporting: Evidence from the United Kingdom and South Africa
This research evaluates the emancipatory potential of biodiversity reporting within the United Kingdom and South Africa. Analysing disclosures from 2018 to 2022, it finds significant increases in reporting intensity. The study presents a principles-based framework to distinguish between compliance-oriented disclosures and transformative, action-oriented environmental reporting.
Rate the raters series
Rate the Raters is a benchmark series by the ERM Sustainability Institute tracking corporate perceptions of ESG rating agencies. It examines quality, usefulness, trust, and engagement with ESG raters across regions and industries, offering a longitudinal view of the evolving ESG ratings landscape for companies and investors.
Ratings insights: Understanding the global green bond index
Sustainable Fitch maps its framework and entity-level ratings to the Bloomberg MSCI Global Green Bond Index, covering 88% of index bonds. While index constituents show stronger framework quality and ICMA alignment than the broader market, many high-quality and transition-relevant bonds sit outside the benchmark due to financial eligibility constraints.
Final report on the amending guidelines on product oversight and governance arrangements for retail banking products to take into account products with ESG features and greenwashing risks
The EBA's final report amends the 2016 Product Oversight and Governance (POG) Guidelines to incorporate ESG features and greenwashing risks for retail banking products. Key changes include requirements for manufacturers and distributors to prevent greenwashing, extended scope to non-bank consumer credit providers, and an application date of 11 January 2027.
The Swiss investors in the ICE system
This BreakFree Suisse research note examines Swiss institutional investors — including UBS, SNB, Zurich Insurance, and others — holding billions of dollars in US ICE contractors Palantir, AT&T, Geo Group, and CoreCivic. The report argues these investments conflict with the investors' stated human rights policies and ESG commitments.
SRI Connect – Market buzz: SRI/ESG market trends & dynamics
This resource provides an introductory overview of Sustainable and Responsible Investment (SRI) and ESG, explaining key concepts, motivations, terminology, market developments and investment strategies. It is designed to help newcomers understand how sustainability considerations are incorporated into investment practice and the broader sustainable investment industry.
