Bemærkelsesværdigt nyt fra ugen der gik

Mette Dalgleish Olsen,  Partner og konsulent i Raison Consulting, deler hver fredag, de mest interessante nyheder hun har læst i den forgangne uge. CSR.dk deler dem efter aftale her: 

#1: Primary forest losses continues despite pockets of progress: A new 2023 forest loss analysis from World Resources Institute and Global Forest Watch reveals a continued rate of tropical primary forest loss in 2023 at 3.7 million hectares, or the equivalent of losing almost 10 football (soccer) fields of forest per minute. The report also finds pockets of progress in Brazil and Colombia who experienced a substantial 36% and 49% decrease in primary forest loss, respectively, although not sufficient to counter the sharp increases in other countries..

#2: How much capital is being directed to Taxonomy-aligned activities? The Platform for Sustainable Finance just released an interim report to help monitor capital expenditures and flows (CAPEX) into EU Taxonomy-aligned activities. The report references a 2023 sample of 711 listed companies which found that a mere 18% of company capital expenditures was reported as Taxonomy-aligned - or "environmentally sustainable" if you will. This is consistent with this recommended read from ERM late last year, dubbing the EU Taxonomy as the "unsung cornerstone of ESG disclosures", as alignment across all dimensions of the Taxonomy (turnover, CAPEX and OPEX) was disappointingly low, even for the largest listed companies in EU. Other than monitoring capital expenditures of companies, the Platform will also monitor how much capital is flowing from investors to Taxonomy-aligned activities. In our view, this is a critical missing piece, which can hopefully help accelerate and incentivize progress towards more sustainable activities.

#3: "Just 57 companies linked to 80% of greenhouse gas emissions since 2016" Leave it to The Guardian to come up with catchy headlines. This one caught our attention this week, building on a new analysis from the Carbon Majors Database, which found that a relatively small but powerful cohort of state-controlled corporations and shareholder-owned multinationals (in the fossil fuel and cement industries, ed.) are the leading drivers of the climate crisis. This probably comes as a surprise to no one, but a baffling figure nonetheless.