Library | ESG issues
Long-termism
Long-termism prioritises enduring strategies over immediate gains, ensuring sustainable development and resource availability for future generations. Corporations and investors are encouraged to consider the long-term consequences of their decisions, moving beyond short-term profit motives to incorporate sustainability and intergenerational impacts. A long-term approach can enhance financial resilience, mitigate risks, and generate more stable and sustainable returns over time.
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Adaptation planning for business: Navigating uncertainty to build long-term resilience
This report provides a framework for businesses to build climate resilience through strategic adaptation planning. It details a four-step process—scoping, designing, implementing, and monitoring—to manage physical risks and unlock opportunities. Integrating these efforts into core operations is essential for protecting long-term value and competitive advantage.
Investor’s guide to goals-based investing and philanthropy
This guide details a goals-based approach to investing and philanthropy, viewing capital as a tool for intrinsic value. It presents a strategic cycle to identify, plan, and evolve goals through focused structures and coherent decision-making, enabling investors to transition from vague intentions to advanced, high-impact strategies.
Investor Group on Climate Change submission on options to strengthen the superannuation performance test
IGCC's submission outlines reforms to the superannuation performance test to support climate-aligned investment. It identifies structural barriers, including regulatory uncertainty and project pipelines, while advocating for optional, prospective implementation of benchmark changes. The report emphasises that acting on climate change is essential for fiduciary duty and long-term member returns.
Futuremaker's toolbox
An open-access foresight collection by Sitra, providing frameworks for trend analysis, scenario building, and strategic decision-making to help professionals navigate and shape future economic and environmental landscapes.
Are we consuming too much groundwater?
This research examines groundwater extraction across 3,400 global aquifers, finding that three-fifths to four-fifths are depleted faster than is optimal. While global aquifers are valued at over £80 trillion ($103 trillion), non-optimal management causes trillions in welfare losses. Optimal strategies involve reducing short-term extraction to restore water tables.
Industrial policy via the IPO market
This research examines how China uses initial public offering regulations as an industrial policy tool. Between 2002 and 2022, favoured industries saw significantly higher listing activity and proceeds. These firms command a persistent valuation premium, as investors treat government support as a durable fundamental rather than temporary sentiment.
Intergenerational report 2026: Australia’s future to 2066
The 2026 Intergenerational Report examines Australia's economic and fiscal trajectory to 2066. It identifies five major transitions: the AI revolution, geopolitical fragmentation, energy transition, population ageing, and industrial transformation. Projections include 2% average annual GDP growth and a long-term total fertility rate of 1.34.
The global rise of index-based ownership of firms
This research examines the global expansion of index-based ownership from 2004 to 2023. Using a benchmark-free classification model, the study finds global index ownership reached 16.9% by 2023. It highlights significant regional variations, noting that US ownership is highest in mid-caps, whereas European and Asian indexing remains concentrated in large-cap firms.
Buybacks playbook
This playbook provides a framework for companies, investors, and policymakers to evaluate share buybacks based on long-term merits. It recommends objective capital allocation, decoupling executive pay from buyback-influenced metrics, and enhancing regulatory disclosures and trading restrictions to ensure repurchases support sustainable corporate strategy rather than short-term gains.
Sustainability or strategy: Bridging the gap between climate change and long-term value creation
FCLTGlobal research identifies a significant gap between corporate climate commitments and long-term business strategies. Analysing the world’s 100 largest companies, the report introduces a Conversation Guide to help organisations integrate climate transition planning into core value creation, capital allocation, and risk management to build investor trust and resilience.
The impact of patient capital
This research examines how investor patience influences venture capital strategies and startup outcomes. Using a 2014 Chinese reform and a survey experiment, it demonstrates that longer-horizon investors, such as insurers, lead funds to adopt longer holding periods and earlier-stage investments, significantly improving portfolio innovation and successful exit rates.
Three ways to move a company: A typology of best-practice investor engagement
This research examines three distinct models of investor engagement through case studies of BP, Honeywell and Bâloise. It highlights how financial-materiality framing and structural shifts in stewardship, including the fragmentation of 'Big Three' voters and SEC regulatory changes, are reshaping corporate governance and activist strategies for 2026 and 2027.
Collaboration in action: How to collectively work towards systems change
This report examines how diverse capital providers collaborate to achieve systems change. It identifies catalytic capital as a pivotal tool for de-risking investments and mobilising private funds. Key findings highlight the necessity of trust, long-term partnerships, and shared metrics to overcome structural barriers and address the $4 trillion SDG financing gap.
Innovation, business cycles, and the climate transition
This research documents that non-green innovation is procyclical, while green innovation is countercyclical. This divergence is driven by green technologies' backloaded profit structures and the reduced cost of skilled R&D labour during downturns. The study highlights that innovation subsidies are significantly more effective when implemented during economic contractions.
Reframing financial markets as complex systems: Tools for systemic risk analysis, portfolio management, and system-level investing
This report explores financial markets as complex adaptive systems, advocating for modelling techniques like agent-based models and network theory. It highlights how these tools improve systemic risk analysis and portfolio management by capturing non-linear behaviours, herding, and interconnectedness, providing a framework for more resilient and adaptive global financial systems.
Legal opinion on enabling impact investing
This legal opinion examines how the Trusts Act 2019 enables New Zealand trustees to engage in impact investing. It reframes fiduciary duties, addresses perceived barriers like SIPO wording, and provides practical realities for organisations seeking to align capital investments with charitable purposes while generating financial returns.
