Making ESG Real: A Return to Values-Driven Investing
November 2023
Environmental and social investing needs to protect the environment and society – rather than protecting shareholders.
As environmental, social, and governance strategies continue to face ill-informed attacks by conservative politicians, Making ESG Real assesses sincere critiques of responsible investment, and proposes how to achieve its original goals.
Current ESG frameworks measure how environmental and social risks may harm shareholders, rather than how business may harm the world. We show how and why this approach is misguided.
Informed by legitimate scholarly and journalistic critiques of ESG investing, the report offers a dramatically different approach that can revive the original goals of ESG investing—namely, using investment decisions to reflect investor values and to create incentives for companies to conduct themselves in a more responsible fashion.
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Conscience Incorporated
In his new book Conscience Incorporated, Michael Posner, director of the Center for Business and Human Rights, offers practical strategies and bold reforms to help businesses align profitability with ethical responsibility.
Reimagining Shareholder Advocacy on Environmental and Social Issues: The promise and pitfalls of ‘E&S stewardship’
Our most recent report on ESG written by Michael Goldhaber, highlights how shareholder advocacy ought to focus on achieving real-world impact for the environment and society, rather than settling for low-bar goals or non-binding promises.
Knight Diversity of Asset Managers Research Series: Higher Education 2024
A new paper by the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, Knight Foundation, and Global Economics Group examines how or if 50 of the wealthiest U.S. colleges and universities invest their endowment funds with diverse-owned asset management firms.