Take Five: No Half Measures

A selection of the major stories impacting ESG investors, in five easy pieces. 

Whole-economy transformation was high on the agenda at London Climate Action Week and beyond.

Silent crisis – Among the more significant announcements made at London Climate Action Week (LCAW) was the unveiling of its draft ‘Global Roadmap for a Nature-positive Economy’ by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Avoiding the nature crisis requires the same whole-economy transformation needed to avert the climate crisis, the conservation organisation contends – and similar tools too, such as sector-specific pathways that plot the path to a sustainable future for governments, companies and investors. Due to be finalised and presented at the biodiversity COP16 in Colombia, the framework focuses on five pillars needed to underpin national plans for the nature-positive transition. While companies and investors are beginning to factor nature-related risks, impacts and opportunities into their decisions – as reflected in updates this week from the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures and the UN Principles for Responsible Investment’s (PRI) Spring engagement initiative – their actions are limited by prevailing policies. To transform economies and redirect capital to nature-positive projects, resource-strapped governments need help, especially in the Global South. Speaking at the launch, Mahmoud Mohieldin, UN Special Envoy on Financing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and UN Climate Change High-Level Champion at COP27, said many are already struggling with the “silent crisis” of unsustainable debt levels. Governments that are already slashing health and education budgets rather than entering restructuring negotiations are not best-placed to realign their finance flows with the Global Biodiversity Framework. For this reason, the WWF’s draft roadmap seeks to provide that technical policy support, but it also expects change among those with the most power to influence, calling for multilateral development banks to “mainstream” nature into their decisions – especially around debt.

Plan to succeed – Transition pathways was a key theme throughout LCAW, in recognition of the work still needed to guide businesses and economies toward credible decarbonisation. The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) confirmed it was assuming oversight of the transition plan disclosure resources developed by the UK’s Transition Plan Taskforce, taking the initiative a step closer to its original remit of establishing a ‘gold standard’ framework to be used across jurisdictions. For good measure, the ISSB also announced closer collaboration with other sustainability standards and reporting bodies, partly to build on its recent commitment to

Morningstar Expands Social Offering with LGBTQ+ Index

The first of its kind for institutional investors, the product was created to meet growing demand and is powered by increased data availability.

Morningstar’s recently released Developed Markets LGBTQ+ Leaders Index has looked to answer growing interest from institutional investors, with social-focused products still lagging behind environmental offerings. The new index offers investors exposure to 100 large- and mid-cap companies showing strong LGBTQ+ inclusive policies and practices from a range of regions and…

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Take Five: Twin Peaks

A selection of the major stories impacting ESG investors, in five easy pieces. 

Developed countries have belatedly reached a target for climate finance, only to be set a new one for nature.

Ten years after – It might have taken them a little more than a decade, but at last they got there. Developed nations mobilised US$115.9 billion of climate finance for developing countries in 2022, it was revealed this week, exceeding for the first time the US$100 billion annual level set in Copenhagen in 2009. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), last year saw a record 30% annual rise in climate finance, meaning the target – originally unveiled at COP 15 – was reached two years late. The total includes more than US$20 billion in attributable private finance, as well as bilateral and multilateral public sector funding, plus export credits. Importantly, adaptation finance accounted for US$32.4 billion of the total – three times the 2016 level. Discussions on a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance for the post-2025 period, which made little progress at COP28, should progress next week’s Bonn Climate Conference, where the agenda will also include carbon credits, adaptation finance and the Global Stocktake, ahead of COP29. In anticipation of the NCQG, the OECD released an analysis recommending use of public sector interventions to directly or indirectly finance climate action. But measures to support the goals of the Paris Agreement must now sit alongside those needed to realise the objectives of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). At a Nairobi summit that concluded yesterday, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity called for investments of at least US$200 billion a year from all sources, and for reform of US$500 billion in harmful subsidies to achieve the GBF’s Goal D: invest and collaborate for nature. These and other recommendations will be discussed at COP16 in Colombia in October.

Gap analysis – A lack of progress on gender equality in the workplace has been underlined by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in a report reflecting fewer jobs and lower pay for women, especially in low-income countries. According to an update to the ILO’s annual World Employment and Social Outlook, the ‘jobs gap’ – which measures the number of persons without a job but who want to work – stands at 22.8% for women in low-income countries, versus 15.3% for men. This contrasts with a gap

Charting the Next Generation of Internet

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May 13, 2024 Graphics & Design Could Tomorrow’s Internet be Streamed from Space?

In 2023, 2.6 billion people could not access the internet. Today, companies worldwide are looking to innovative technology to ensure more people are online at the speed of today’s technology. 

Could satellite internet provide the solution?  

In collaboration with MSCI, we embarked on a journey to explore whether tomorrow’s internet could be streamed from space. 

Satellite Internet’s Potential Customer Base

Millions of people live in rural communities or mobile homes, and many spend much of their lives at sea or have no fixed abode. So, they cannot access the internet simply because the technology is unavailable. 

Satellite internet gives these communities access to the internet without requiring a fixed location. Consequently, the volume of people who could get online using satellite internet is significant:

AreaPotential Subscribers Households Without Internet Access600,000,000 RVs 11,000,000 Recreational Boats8,500,000 Ships100,000 Commercial Aircraft25,000 Advances in Satellite Technology

Satellite internet is not a new concept. However, it has only recently been that roadblocks around cost and long turnaround times have been overcome.

NASA’s space shuttle, until it was retired in 2011, was the only reusable means of transporting crew and cargo into orbit. It cost over $1.5 billion and took an average of 252 days to launch and refurbish. 

In stark contrast, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 can now launch objects into orbit and maintain them at a fraction of the time and cost, less than 1% of the space shuttle’s cost.

Average Rocket Turnaround TimeAverage Launch/Refurbishment Cost Falcon 9*21 days $1,000,000 Space Shuttle252 days$1,500,000,000 (approximately)

Satellites are now deployed 300 miles in low Earth orbit (LEO) rather than 22,000 miles above Earth in Geostationary Orbit (GEO), previously the typical satellite deployment altitude.

What this means for the consumer is that satellite internet streamed from LEO has a latency of 40 ms, which is an optimal internet connection. Especially when compared to the 700 ms stream latency experienced with satellite internet streamed from GEO. 

What Would it Take to Build a Satellite Internet?

SpaceX, the private company that operates Starlink, currently has 4,500 satellites. However, the