Library | ESG issues
Purpose & Mission
An organisation’s purpose defines its core reason for existence, guiding its strategies and operations. In the finance industry, aligning corporate purpose with sustainable practices involves developing innovative financial products, engaging in policy advocacy, and directing capital toward sustainable investments. This alignment fosters long-term value creation and supports the transition to a sustainable economy.
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Unblocking climate and biodiversity finance: Global public investment for global missions
The report proposes integrating mission-oriented policy with Global Public Investment to unblock climate and biodiversity finance. It argues for predictable, equitable public funding, shared decision-making, reduced debt reliance, and reforms such as a Climate and Biodiversity Marshall Plan and redesigned debt-for-nature swaps.
Benchmarking impact: Australian impact investor insights activity and performance series
Benchmarking Impact is a benchmark series that provides a structured, recurring assessment of Australia’s impact investing market. It examines investor activity, market practices, and product development to support comparability over time and inform understanding of how impact investing is evolving across the financial system.
UNICEF USA’s child lens investing series
This series outlines UNICEF’s Child-Lens Investing approach, providing practical guidance for investors to integrate children’s rights and well-being into investment strategy, due diligence, contribution, and measurement across asset classes. It supports consistent application of a child lens alongside established impact and ESG practices.
The twin transition century
This paper argues that Europe’s green transition depends on aligning digital transformation with sustainability goals. It outlines how digital research can both reduce its own environmental footprint and enable climate action, calling for long-term, interdisciplinary research investment and coordinated EU policy.
Food systems investing in East Africa: The roles of funds in financing food systems transformation
This report analyses 23 impact funds investing in East African food systems, assessing their design, impact alignment, and financing roles. It identifies gaps, good practices, and recommendations to strengthen agroecological and regenerative food systems investing.
Global investor commission on mining 2030
The report outlines an investor-led 10-year vision for a responsible, resilient mining sector. It sets goals to align capital, governance and stewardship with social and environmental standards, supporting mineral supply for the low-carbon transition while managing risk and long-term value.
Can you be the change you’d like to see? Three US philosophers aim to offer hope
This review examines Somebody Should Do Something, a timely book arguing that individuals can spark meaningful social change by acting collectively rather than alone. It assesses the authors’ hopeful framework alongside contemporary political realities, questioning whether grassroots agency is sufficient amid concentrated power and rising authoritarianism.
BPI France: European Defence Bond Framework
Bpifrance’s European Defence Bond Framework defines principles for issuing use-of-proceeds bonds financing eligible defence-sector projects, mainly SMEs, to support European sovereignty. It details eligibility criteria, exclusions, ESG safeguards, governance, reporting, and proceeds management, while stating the bonds are not ICMA-aligned sustainable instruments.
Finance for war: Finance for peace: How values based banks foster peace in a world of increasing conflict
The report analyses global financial links to arms production, showing significant funding for weapons despite rising conflict. It contrasts this with values-based banks, particularly GABV members, which largely exclude arms financing, arguing divestment supports peace, reduces risk, and aligns finance with social and environmental objectives.
Nature as Shareholder: Who speaks for the Trees?: The opportunities and challenges of nature owning shares of companies
The paper examines the legal and practical implications of nature owning company shares, drawing on New Zealand precedents for legal personhood. It outlines governance models, challenges, and potential impacts on corporate purpose, investment, and long-term decision-making.
Rearm europe, rearm finance: What role for responsible investment in the financing of european defense?
Mirova assesses Europe’s defence rearmament and examines how responsible investors could contribute without undermining ESG principles. It argues for selective financing, strict exclusions, and innovative tools such as defence bonds, while maintaining focus on environmental transition and European sovereignty.
One-earth fashion: 33 transformation targets for a just fashion system within planetary boundaries
The report outlines fashion’s environmental and social impacts and proposes 33 time-bound transformation targets across materials, labour, value distribution and governance. It calls for reduced virgin inputs, fair working conditions and paradigm shifts to align the global fashion system with planetary boundaries and social justice.
Investor influence in private markets: How investors activities can result in changes in outcomes for people and or the natural environment
This report examines how private market investors influence social and environmental outcomes through investment decisions and firm-level actions. It proposes a framework to assess pathways, outcomes and causality, supporting impact management beyond portfolio company effects.
Our predicament: The fundamental flaws of predominant economic systems - and the cultures scaffolding them
This report synthesises interviews with global thinkers to diagnose structural flaws in dominant economic systems. It argues that extractive capitalism, growth imperatives, inequality and ecological overshoot underpin a planetary predicament, and frames the challenge as navigation towards regenerative, responsibility-based economies rather than problem-solving.
Theorising unconventional climate advocates and their relationship to the environmental movement
This study theorises “unconventional climate advocates” and analyses their position within Australia’s environmental movement using social network analysis. It finds these advocates are peripheral yet potentially effective in engaging climate-hesitant constituencies by operating independently from conventional environmentalists.
The Other Half of the Transition: Why Livestock Deserves as Much Attention as Energy
This article highlights the major climate impact of livestock and explains why the absence of clear roadmaps, metrics, and financing strategies has left the sector far behind the energy transition. It proposes policy reforms, mitigation hierarchies, and justice-centered pathways to unlock effective and equitable change.
