(FT) Financial groups in the front of fight against climate change–‘Policymakers essentially leverage the sector to help push for action’

The international Financial Stability Board was established by the G20 after its London summit in 2009. In 2015 it tasked Mark Carney and Michael Bloomberg, the Bank of England governor and former New York mayor respectively, to lead the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures.

The cross-sector TCFD has since developed a standard for voluntary disclosures to help businesses align their climate change statements relating to governance, strategy (including scenario analysis), risk management and metrics. As the move towards a lower carbon economy gains pace, policymakers and investors are using the TCFD as the basis for making changes to disclosure requirements

We can see more climate-related litigation globally, particularly in the US. Shareholder activism is also growing: institutional investors led by the Church of England are encouraging energy and energy-intensive companies to increase their ambition over tackling climate change. In Australia, lawyers are debating the ambit of fiduciary duty after the publication of a lawyer’s opinion which argues that climate has to be considered in relevant business decisions, a debate likely to spread to other countries.

Regulatory changes in the EU and UK, which come into force in the next 18 months, will nudge large corporates, asset owners, institutional investors and asset managers to explain publicly how the financial risk of climate change is treated in their business strategy.

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Posted in Church of England (CoE), Climate Change, Weather, Corporations/Corporate Life, Energy, Natural Resources, Ethics / Moral Theology, Stock Market