As the days grow shorter and the autumn leaves start to fall, we look back over the summer months and reflect on what has been happening at Ayres Punchard and on some of the media stories that we’ve helped shape.
During June and July, apart from the fact that my volunteering with HM Coastguard took priority over writing news reports for the website, work on our application to become a B Corporation also took a top spot. The application process has been a really beneficial experience for all of us.
Documenting our processes, measuring our environmental and social impact and reporting it to another organisation for scrutiny is rather the opposite of what we’re used to. It’s usually us doing the investigating of others so it’s quite interesting to be in the hot seat.
The accreditation, if we can achieve it, will be very worthwhile as it demonstrates and evidences our commitment to operate a sustainable business that is doing all it can to minimise its impact on the planet, do as little harm to humanity as possible and contribute a positive impact on the transition to net zero. Quantifying our carbon footprint has been challenging but also an illuminating and very educational experience.
Ayres Punchard in the news
Mitigation or adaptation – that is the question!
Following on from the Stuart Kirk HSBC climate denial shocker, which was the last major article we published, I spoke to Chloe Meley a reporter at Citywire’s New Model Adviser on the 27th May about the role of future tech in the sustainable investment world. This built on some of the themes that came out of the Stuart Kirk speech and contrasted the two main approaches to climate change investment: adaptation and mitigation.
Adaptation capitalises on climate change as an opportunity for investment in new ideas designed to allow certain groups of humans to be protected from the adverse extreme weather conditions, rising sea levels, floods, fires and high winds. These are big projects that take many years of planning and are usually very capital intensive, such as decarbonisation plants, nuclear power stations, flood and fire barriers and new technologies to help us cope with the problem once it hits us. Space exploration and the building of cities on the Moon or Mars are at the extreme end of the adaptation scale.
Mitigation is more about doing something now to reduce the impact and ultimately reverse climate change to keep us below 1.5ºC. Clearly the latter is looking less and less plausible, although I argue that efforts to mitigate are more important now, than leaving things until it really is too late and the only option is adaptation. Mitigation is basically renewable energy and associated technologies, better land use and more regenerative agricultural practices. It also requires radical greenhouse gas emissions reductions and a swift transition away from fossil fuels and other carbon intensive industries, which is very challenging. We are now certainly looking at a combination of adaptation and mitigation, having left it far too late for a singular global mitigation strategy.
Relying solely on adaptation would condemn vast swathes of humanity to either death from the extreme weather consequences or from conflict brought about by forced migration and starvation because of climate related food shortages and dwindling water resources, not to mention rising sea levels and extreme weather events that many people cannot be protected from.
Greenwashing & wokewashing – a confused approach to sustainable investment
On the 2nd August I spoke with Natasha Turner at ESG Clarity about our investment process and the way in which a lot of greenwashing is happening as a result of advisers and investment managers confusing ethical investment with sustainable investment, often misunderstanding the role that ESG analysis has to play. This is something I have been vocal about for the last 10 years, sadly to the extent that it’s almost become a cliché and now I fear the chickens are literally coming home to roost.
You can read the whole article here.
Federated Hermes – having their humble pie and eating it
In an interview with Hannah Smith, 22nd August, also with ESG Clarity, I discussed the shocking news that Federated Hermes, probably the world’s largest and oldest sustainable asset manager, was caught funding the State Financial Officers Federation (SFOF), a very active and public facing climate denial and anti-ESG lobby group in the USA. Although Hermes released a statement at the time saying that funding the SFOF was not the same as supporting its objectives, they have subsequently terminated their Gold Level Sponsorship. Although Ayres Punchard or the Key to the Future model portfolio service have never invested in any Federated Hermes funds, it’s still a very sad story because things like this undermine trust in the investment industry.
The rules of engagement and divestment
Finally, for now, on the 2nd September, Natasha Turner at ESG Clarity reported on an interview we did in the summer, this time about engagement and the proven pitfalls of engaging with seriously bad companies that impact negatively on the planet and humanity. This is something else that I have been banging on about for many years. What is the point of engagement with companies that are simply rotten to the core? They have no place in a sustainable investment portfolio and as a result we advocate for divestment where the transgressions are overwhelming and irreversible or where the company has no intention of changing. Our work on Centene and Intertek are examples of that. In the case of Centene the engagement with the fund manager, urging them to divest, continues. With Intertek, we will chalk that up as a victory, where the fund manager has now divested.
