Progressive lawmakers are currently pushing a bold resolution on climate change that they hope will set a course for Democratic presidential candidates and legislative efforts after the 2020 elections.
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FINDING SOCIALLY responsible investments is easier than ever before, but questions still remain around just what impact these investments are actually having.
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The government shutdown, Brexit and tariffs — they're all affecting trade.
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As You Sow released its fifth Invest Your Values screening tool, Gender Equality Funds, in mid-November 2018. Gender Equality Funds is a free, online tool that enables individual and institutional investors to apply a gender lens to mutual fund and ETF investments. More at- https://genderequalityfunds.org
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GENDER EQUALITY investors got an early holiday present this week: a new free fund screening tool enabling them to evaluate the gender equality of their mutual funds and ETFs.
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The fund industry continues to launch more funds investing with an eye toward environmental, social and governance, or ESG–150 in 2018 alone at last count.
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If you’re like most people with a 401(k), you probably don’t know which companies are in your mutual funds, let alone whether those companies have policies to support gender equality or how many women they have on their board of directors or senior management team.
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Some investment services firms are trying to address the problem by embracing what’s known as “gender lens investing.” The idea is to get investors to put their money into companies that advance gender equality.
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Weapon Free Funds breaks down the individual offerings from investment companies. The Equity Index 500 fund from T. Rowe Price, for instance, has 18 weapons stocks; its New Horizons fund has just three. The Health Sciences, Emerging Markets, and Global Technology funds have no weapons companies. Users can also pick their battles, as it were–filtering on all types of weapons makers or on just military weapons or just civilian firearms.
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MSCI also has carbon-footprint data, while As You Sow has a fossil-free screen for mutual funds but no carbon-data metric, says Christina Alfandary, managing director of ESG for Gamco Asset Management. “Some investors want to see this [expanded] carbon portfolio information,” she says. Now they can.
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Proxy Preview 2018 (As You Sow, the Sustainable Investments Institute and Proxy Impact) features more than 400 shareholder resolutions filed on environmental, social and governance issues. The top three shareholder issues are political activity spending (80 resolutions), climate risk (80 resolutions) and equal treatment for women (70 resolutions). The 125 corporate signatories to the RE100 campaign need to add 87 gigawatts of new wind and solar power capacity worldwide by 2030 to meet their 100 percent renewable energy commitments, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance research. The report suggests that not all of the RE100 members will meet their commitment.
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Asset managers can now choose from a multitude of fossil free investment indices. Fossil Free Funds, a project initiated by the NGO As You Sow, allows anyone to check whether their portfolios and pension plans contain fossil fuels.
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"It's low-hanging fruit for companies to extend ESG into retirement planning," said Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow. "Seventy-four percent of Fortune 1000 company employees want to invest in a future they can live in." For some, it may be fossil fuel-free, for others it could be gender equity and for others, a weapons-free fund.
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Andrew Behar: Corporate managers are responsible to their boards of directors and their boards are responsible to the shareholders. In terms of power, shareholders often have the last word, especially with a strong vote.
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In 2016, according to non-profit As YouSow.org, which advocates for green-focused investors, only one of the 100 largest 401(k) plans offered a fund choice that could be classified as social, responsible, or impactful – which can achieve green benefits for nature and stronger financial return potential.
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Now there is a tool, the website Fossil Free Funds, that helps pinpoint funds and E.T.F.s focused on companies withsmaller carbon footprints. “There were 10 funds when we started that we identified as fossil-fuel free,” said Andrew S. Behar, chief executive officer of As You Sow, the Oakland, Calif., environmental group that created Fossil Free Funds. “Now it’s up to 31.”
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In the one year since Corporate Knights and As You Sow started the Clean200 rank list, the Clean200 companies generated a return of 16.9 percent versus a decline of 1.2 percent for its fossil fuel benchmark the S&P 1200 Global Energy Index.
As You Sow has engaged as shareholders with the electronics, consumer goods and beverage industries over the past two decades to promote corporate responsibility for recycling products and packaging. Carpet makers represent another important industrial sector struggling to make meaningful progress on recycling, and we intend to engage with shareholders of several large publicly traded companies to improve performance in light of problems that have surfaced recently.
"We intend to engage with shareholders of several large publicly traded carpet companies to improve performance in light of problems that have surfaced recently."
"Carpet makers should spend less time hindering vendors to engage on recycling policy and more time figuring how to redesign carpet to make it recyclable."
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Fossil Free Funds scorecards investment companies for carbon contamination. It informs us, for example, that the Vanguard Health Care sector fund (VHT) is relatively innocent, accounting for 8 tons a year of carbon dioxide, or the equivalent in other greenhouse gases, per $1 million salted away. VHT is clean because Pfizer and Merck don’t own steel foundries. With an index fund you'd be looking at 155 tons.
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