ESG Research and Resource Center

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are playing an increasingly important role in shaping the sustainability roadmaps of investors, governments and civil society groups. In Sustainalytics’ thematic research report, 10 for 2020: Creating Impact Through Thematic Investing, we present investors with ten ESG investment themes that can positively contribute to advancing the SDGs.

Understand how Sustainalytics' research and data can assist benchmark administrators in implementing the EU Climate Transition Benchmarks and EU Paris-aligned Benchmarks.

With investors increasingly incorporating ESG considerations into their investment decisions, many are looking into how corporate leadership may be incentivized to pursue an ESG agenda. This report offers insights to global equity investors considering pay-links as a topic for corporate engagement.

We are excited to share that Sustainalytic’s CEO Michael Jantzi, participated in a clean finance podcast hosted by Canada Clean50 as part of their #CleanReset initiative. In the company of fellow leading clean finance experts, the dialogue is an insightful overview of how Canada’s current position on ESG regulation may impact financial sustainability for large Canadian corporations.

Food production is a leading contributor to global GHG emissions, deforestation, water stress and biodiversity loss, and the sector is increasingly under scrutiny to mitigate its environmental footprint. A failure to manage related impacts and adapt to changing consumer trends could result in material business risks or missing out on opportunities. Land and forest investments could become stranded assets. Sustainalytics will also provide a preview of its new thematic engagement, Feeding the Future.

Since the launch of the first Index, recognition of the human and economic consequences of poor nutrition has increased. Globally one in three people are now either undernourished, overweight or obese. Over the last 35 years obesity has more than doubled and has now reached epidemic proportions. Over the next 10 years, malnutrition is set to continue to increase.

In New Frontiers: African Sovereign Debt and ESG Risk, we leverage our Country Risk Ratings to analyze ESG risk among African countries. Our findings show country-level ESG risk and average sovereign credit ratings exhibit a strong positive correlation.

Finding your path in the upcoming ESG regulations: A spotlight on EU Taxonomy and Disclosures The Taxonomy is a classification framework, part of the EU Sustainable Finance Action Plan, designed to determine whether an economic activity is environmentally sustainable.

Since 2012, GES together with the Polish Association of Listed Companies, a self-government organization of companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, has been involved in an educational project ESG analysis of companies in Poland aimed at increasing disclosure and transparency of reporting on non-financial indicators.

While investors are being drawn to the cannabis industry by the lure of an expanding market and profit potential, uncertainties around regulations, scalability and potential stock price corrections remain. Underexplored ESG risks could also present material concerns for management teams and investors entering the industry.

Sustainalytics in collaboration with UNICEF, The United Nations Children’s Fund, has published a new report titled, Investor Guidance on Integrating Children’s Rights into Investment Decision-Making. The guidance offers investors a practical toolkit on how to incorporate children’s rights into investment analysis and engagement activities.

For this edition, Sustainalytics, in cooperation with AP7, repeated the analysis of the same 299 companies on the five universal and three sector-specific indicators focusing on the key aspects of corporate water management.

Nuclear power in particular can be a controversial and confusing topic with respect to ESG factors. Sustainalytics, a leading global ESG and corporate governance analytics firm, has joined Morningstar Research Services to present a comprehensive ESG analysis of nuclear power, including a look at carbon emissions intensity, waste management, operational management, public safety, worker safety, and regulatory oversight.

The first half of 2020 saw $200bn in sustainable bonds issued globally with green bonds accounting for nearly half of that. As more companies commit to achieving net-zero emissions and as the world shifts to a low carbon economy, the CEO Investor Forum and Sustainalytics welcome industry experts to weigh in on the state of the sustainable finance market during this one-hour virtual event.

Collecting and processing personal data has become one of the most significant drivers of financial value in today’s economy. But as the upside of personal data grows, so too does the downside risk associated with data security, management and privacy.

GES has engaged the cocoa industry for many years to increase its effort in tackling the issue of child labour. As a part of its long-term engagement, GES published its second public report on the issue, including investor expectations and a corporate benchmark of leading cocoa and chocolate companies.

Based on our analysis, we find that investors in the FTSE Emerging Index are exposed to over 14 percent more unmanaged ESG risk than those in the FTSE Developed Index. The ESG risk gap between these indices is largest on the issue of data privacy and security. In addition, investors in select equity markets, such as China, may face a trade-off between chasing higher economic growth and mitigating portfolio ESG risk.

This four-part guide focuses on key areas of sustainable finance, offering companies, corporate investment banks and investors a better understanding of market trends and important developments.

Solutions for closing the food gap are likely to come from both production innovations and changes in consumption trends: on the one hand, it is essential that we increase the supply of food, while on the other, there is real potential for a reduction in demand for certain commodities.