The FT’s Moral Money reflects on the power of the UN’s new group of Global Investors for Sustainable Development Group.
As anyone in the environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment world can attest, the UN is capable of assembling task forces that aim to find ways to funnel more money into the sustainable development goals (SDGs).
But making sure those groups’ recommendations do not end up gathering dust on a shelf has proven difficult.
Last year António Guterres, UN secretary-general, sought to tackle this head on when he called together 30 chief executives from the world’s largest companies, banks and pension funds to form the Global Investors for Sustainable Development (GISD) group.
They have now released their first set of recommendations. Among them is a call for the G20 countries to push the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to establish global ESG disclosure standards and a laundry list of guidance for the European Commission.
The group certainly has a lot of firepower. Participants include members of the Blended Finance Taskforce like Citigroup and Allianz — and Jay Collins, vice-chairman of Citigroup and chair of the GISD report committee, is optimistic the GISD will create real change.
Simply bringing the GISD members together has already laid the groundwork for new sustainable financing projects, he told Moral Money. “When we started talking about the need to scale blended finance and why the model isn’t working . . . we realised that the group of us around the table have the ability to do something, and to create something.”
The pandemic has only served to “supercharge” the need to achieve the SDGs, he said. “I haven’t seen since World War II this urgent need to align government policies with private sector actors and investors.”