Institutional Investors and Climate Change

Asset Owners Disclosure Project: A further 157 investors managing a total of $14.2 trillion were taking first steps towards addressing climate change, while 246 managing $14 trillion were doing nothing at all, the report said, according to Euro News. Climate change risk is now a mainstream issue for institutional investors and last year has seen many significantly step up their action to manage this, AODP Chief Executive Julian Poulter said in a statement. A report by the Asset Owners Disclosure Project , a not-for-profit organisation aimed at improving the management of climate change, found that just under a fifth of the top investors – or 97 managing a total of $9.4 trillion in assets – were taking tangible steps to mitigate global warming These include investing in low polluting assets or encouraging the companies they invest in to be greener. However … it is shocking that nearly half the world biggest investors are doing nothing at all to mitigate climate risk, he said, adding pensions funds and insurers that ignore climate change were gambling with the savings and financial security of hundreds of millions of people . The AODP rates the world 500 biggest pension funds, insurers, sovereign wealth funds, foundations and endowments, which collectively manage $38 trillion in assets, on their success at managing climate risk within their portfolios. Copyright 2016 Reuters. Based on direct disclosures and publicly available information, they are graded from ‘AAA’ to ‘D’ while those taking no action are rated ‘X’. Best-performing was Britain Environment Agency Pension Fund, with $3.96 billion in assets. euronews provides breaking news articles from Reuters as a service to its readers, but does not edit the articles it publishes. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.