Sustainability Weekly — Week 13
This week the focus will be on what people can actually accomplish sustainability wise when we do the hard work consistently. From great strides in conservation to big movements in the financial market the world is full of examples of people doing amazing things to make the world a better place. There is understandably a lot of doom and gloom around the globe now, but in times like these it is more important than ever to celebrate the good we can do, and uplift those that do it.
🌳 First bit of such positive news comes to us from Nina Benoit.
This is a bit out of my normal comfort zone, since it is not related to sustainability reporting or sustainable finance, but none the less this seems incredible. 40 % of the landmass of the country is now protected. That sounds like a huge amount and a big investment.
Why is this not getting more attention? 🤯 During COP30 Brazil, Colombia became the first country to declare the entirety of the Amazon rainforest within its borders under protection. This is over 40% of the country’s landmass. This area is now declared a protected reserve zone for renewable resources. No new oil or mining projects will be approved in the region. However, those already in operation will continue. Still, this represents an important step toward preserving the Amazon, which is often referred to as “the lungs of the world”. And, although only 7% of the Amazon rainforest is under Colombia’s jurisdiction, it sets an important precedent for other Amazonian nations. Why is it so important to protect the Amazon? To start with, it is home to 10% of all the earth’s known species. And, it is vital for our climate and maintaining global ecological balance. Deforestation in the Amazon is a significant and serious issue for the entire world as this rainforest is one of the largest carbon sinks and is crucial for the global water cycle. Finally, millions of people depend on the Amazon for their livelihoods, and it is the ancestral home of many indigenous peoples. What are some ways you would like to see the Amazon protected? Be sure to follow me, Nina Benoit, for more climate news like this. Thank you to Alix Willemez, PhD for the post inspo! Sources: Mongabay
📝 The next example of great sustainability work comes from a post by Andreas Ras...
📝 The next example of great sustainability work comes from a post by Andreas Rasche , where he derives estimates on what number of companies excluded from mandatory sustainability reporting by the Omnibus will continue to report regardless. The number he reaches is 12000 to 17000. This is huge, actually. This means that even without regulatory pressure over 10000 of the biggest companies in the EU are willing to report on their sustainability publicly. In my opinion this is due in no small part to the increasing pressure from investors for companies to release sustainability data, the receipts for which we will be going into soon.
How many exempted firms will continue reporting on sustainability after the Omnibus? A grounded estimate requires distinguishing between clusters within the population of descoped #CSRD firms. In total, the Omnibus exempted approximately 41,700 firms. These can be grouped into three segments: 1️⃣ Former NFRD firms that were descoped (~6,700) 2️⃣ Former Wave 2 firms with voluntary reporting experience (~8,300) 3️⃣ Former Wave 2 firms without prior reporting experience (~26,700) Drawing on discussions with practitioners, I derived lower and upper bounds for expected reporting behavior across these clusters. Using a range, rather than a point estimate, captures uncertainty and reflects plausible variation. 👉 Based on this approach, an estimated 30% (lower bound) to 43% (upper bound) of exempted firms may continue reporting outside the formal CSRD scope. This estimate does not account for the specific standards adopted (e.g., revised ESRS, VSME). Main takeaway: early voluntary reporting is likely to be driven by firms with prior experience (e.g., under NFRD). This dynamic may evolve over time as stakeholder expectations and market pressures shift....
📈 Moving on to the financial side of things there is this article from ESGtoday.
This article is a prime example of the continuing push by the financial markets to integrate sustainability into both investments and loans. This article discusses a 435 million dollar loan by the banking group Standard Chartered to COFCO International, an agriculture company.
According to Standard Chartered, the new transaction marks the bank’s first social resilience themed sustainability linked loan, and one of the first globally to integrate adaptation-focused resilience outcomes alongside social supply-chain safeguards. The closing of the loan follows a recent announcement from Standard Chartered that it surpassed its goal to reach $1 billion in annual income from sustainable finance in 2025.
This is just another example of what can be accomplished with systematic effort by people who are passionate about sustainability. To even get to this point, where a large international financial institution is moving billions of dollars of sustainable money is the result of decades of hard work in convincing the financial sector of the importance of sustainability.
🇪🇺 Attention for any companies who have been reporting under the EU taxonomy!
The European Commission is seeking feedback on possible revisions to the criteria of the EU taxonomy, the classification system for sustainable economic activities. The goal of the revision is to make the framework simpler and easier to use.
Please go give your valuable feedback and do your part in the oh so important work that this entire edition of Sustainability Weekly is all about!
Quick recap on the EU taxonomy: Eu taxonomy (and taxonomy regulations in general) are regulations that set out to define what it means for a business to be sustainable. This is done through a set of industry specific criteria, that set out the minimum requirements for what a sustainable business looks like in said industry. This information is then utilised by financial market actors do determine how sustainable their investments are (what % of their investments align with the definitions of sustainable business set out in the taxonomy).
👩⚖️ Now heading off into another domain of effort - namely the legal world.
Last week I wrote about the conflicts between the US federal government and California over sustainability regulations. The message there was that the US is falling sadly behind the rest of the world via their aggressive (federally directed) ESG pushback. This time I want to highlight the other side of the coin, because even though there is a lot more work to do in this department in the US than in some other parts of the world that does not mean that nobody on the other side of the Atlantic is fighting the good fight.
This article comes from ESGtoday, and in it we find, that a grouping of 24 states, alongside 15 cities and regions have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s repeal of the landmark 2009 Endangerment Finding underlying the U.S. government’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the automotive sector and underpinning GHG regulations across other carbon-intensive sectors.
In short, the repealed decision was a statement made by the EPA (environmental protection agency) that found that “green house gas emissions endangered public health and welfare through impacts including global warming, by contributing to extreme weather events, heat-related mortality, and by reducing air quality.”
This statement was then later used as a justification for regulations aimed at reducing GHG emissions, which means that without it a lot of the US environmental policy is in danger. The lawsuit challenges the repealing of this finding based on an earlier supreme court decision that directs the EPA to regulate pollutants found to endanger public health and welfare.
To me this shows resilience, and that even in times when we seem to be taking steps back the work of those wanting to make the world a better place never ends. It is comforting seeing so many doing that work.
📊 Finally, what does all of this work lead to? Well, here is a good example coming from ESGtoday yet again.
This article discusses a statement from the Dutch bank ING, that reports a whopping 25 % increase in its sustainable finance activity over the past year, with the bank mobilising 166 billion € in sustainable finance volume. This exceeds the targets set by the bank, which was to reach 150 bn by 2027. This all comes amid the sustainable finance market in the us not growing and even seeing a drop in private sector engagement in sustainable finance due to political pressure. This means that engagement in other parts of the world grew even more in comparison. To me this speaks to the fact that a shift towards sustainable finance and sustainability in general is inevitable, and the slowing down and backtracking of progress is a political decision rooted in ideology.
In my view this is a manifestation of decades of work towards sustainability in business and finance. From conservation efforts, public communication, legal battles and champions internal to the financial institutions we can see that gradual change can reach a tipping point, a point where the dam breaks. Maybe we are not even at that point yet, but at least the tide is turning – in my opinion at least.
I’ll be back next week. Until then – stay hopeful.
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