Stockholm (NordSIP) – INNORBIS has announced a partnership with Kommuninvest, Kristianstad University, City of Umeå, RISE, SEI, Samariterhemmet Diakoni and Viable Cities through KTH to develop a new framework and standards in sustainable business financing and investment. The project, called a Tool for integration of sustainability measures in financial analysis, is financed by Vinnova and will be presented during an event on May 26th.
“The tool evaluates value growth and monitors the development of the factors that are relevant to meet the results we want – a positive effect in our society and the planet we want to live on. This tool enables the basis for a new, holistic, financial risk scale integrated with ESG and sustainability measurements. It is a marriage between climate action and sustainability, ethics management and finance for our generation in transition. This is the product that will change the market,” Angelica Lips da Cruz, founder and CEO of Innorbis, says (Pictured).
The project is motivated by increased demand for a joint measure of sustainability usable by cities, businesses and the financial sector when estimating whether projects actually have a positive effect on societal sustainable development. The tool under development by the tool under development by INNORBIS focuses on scalability and facilitating priorities in the decision-making processes for financing, investment and asset management.
“We see a need for increased knowledge about how sustainability factors can affect the Swedish municipal sector financially. This can apply to the impact of climate change and climate adaptation measures as well as other climate and environmental goals, including nature conservation and biodiversity. By participating in this project, we hope to be able to gain valuable insights in this knowledge field based on a solid empirical basis,” adds Björn Bergstrand, Head of Sustainability at Kommuninvest.
INNORBIS counts on the support of experts for this project, including David Andrich, from the University of Western Australia, and a leader in measurement science, as well as Joakim Ekstrand, Senior Lecturer in economics at the Faculty of Health Sciences at Kristianstad University.
“For the City of Umeå, it is central that the financial system is developed both on national and local level to support the transition to a climate-neutral and socially sustainable society,” explains Johan Gammelgård, Director of Administration and Innovation at City of Umeå. By testing and developing sustainability measures in a local context, our understanding and ability increases while we can contribute to the national system with partners such as Kommuninvest.”
“In the light of Samariterhemmet Diakoni’s work for a more humane society, it is highly interesting and hopeful to participate in Innorbis’s development of new measurement methods and tools for the financial market. It is of the utmost importance for our common future that more and more capital is directed to activities and initiatives that build a good and humane society and that more capital finds its way into the idea-driven sector. That is why Innorbis’s initiative and our joint development project feel gratifying and hopeful”, Erik Eckerdal, Director of Samariterhemmet Diakoni adds.
Innorbis was launched at the end of 2018 by Angelica Lips da Cruz. Much of the work of INNORBIS and its partners has focused on “metrological interoperability” and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). According to them, the 17 goals and the 231 different indicators attached to the SDGs are ordinal scores such as rankings that are useful for hierarchically ordering performance rather than actually measuring it. At the same time, the indicators are treated in isolation from one another and often mistaken for actually measures, they argue. INNORBIS offers a software tool that collects data from trusted sources based on a list of SDG indicators cleaned of inefficient redundancies and inconsistencies that identifies and package them for investors to assess the sustainability of their investments.
Image Courtesy of INNORBIS
