As the season’s extreme weather continues to wreak havoc, the EU Commission is busy with new and updated sustainability-related proposals. With the unusually catchy title “Fit for 55“, this week’s EU legislative package should manage to retain some attention. It surely made for an entertaining ‘Snap’!
Also, on the EU front, on July 12, the draft Proposal for a Social Taxonomy was published officially on July 12. “In the face of a pandemic, unanswered social questions around a sustainable transition, continuing human rights abuses and continuously rising costs for housing, the time is right to identify economic activities that contribute to advancing social objectives,” argue the authors of the proposal.
In the same context, we reached out to human rights specialist Kristina Touzenis, founder and managing partner at BST Impact who shared her scepticism about the hype of sustainable investing. “I think that everything ESG suffers a little from being turned into ‘the flavour of the month’,” she told us in an exclusive interview.
While the Nordics have retreated to their summer cabins in an unprecedented heatwave, we noted that Swedish pension Alecta announced its first interim targets to reduce the Scope 1 and 2 carbon footprint of its listed equities and corporate bonds as well as its directly owned real estate. Meanwhile, Swedish owner and operator of railway stations Jernhusen issued a successful three-year SEK300 million green bond.
Last but not least, the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative added another 41 asset managers to the ranks of its members, including MFS Investment Management and the International Business of Federated Hermes among several other large international houses.
Featured image: Envato elements / NordSIP
