Global biodiversity is deteriorating faster than at any time in human history, largely due to human activity. Such massive biodiversity loss poses serious economic and financial risk as more than half the world’s economy is moderately or highly dependent on nature. To reverse this trend, companies must start by meaningfully assessing, disclosing, and addressing their nature-related impacts, dependencies, risks, and opportunities.
Read moreThe Net-Zero Banking Alliance, Climate Finance, and Banks' Accountability to Shareholders
The Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) formed in the spring of 2021 to great fanfare. Banks in the alliance made a voluntary commitment, signed by their CEO, to set and publish targets that are aligned with pathways for net zero by 2050, reduce emissions associated with their material financing activities in carbon-intensive sectors, and develop transition plans to achieve the targets.
Read moreThe Future of Freight: Decarbonization of Heavy-Duty Trucking is Accelerating
The transportation sector is the largest source of U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Medium- and heavy-duty vehicles are the fastest-growing source of transport emissions, driven by the expansion of e-commerce and consumer demand for fast delivery. Trucks’ disproportionate impact on emissions and community health underscores the urgency of adopting cleaner, more efficient technologies and practices.
Read moreChallenging Companies to Draw Down Use of Flexible Packaging
Flexible packaging is one of the fastest-growing packaging sectors and a major contributor to global plastic pollution. It is the second largest packaging segment in the U.S. after corrugated cardboard, valued at $63 billion, comprising 21% of the U.S. packaging market.
Read moreMarching Steadily Toward an Uninsurable Future
Insurance is the climate crisis canary in the coal mine, and the canary is expiring. Last year, insurers globally had a record $154 billion in natural catastrophe losses. In the U.S., insured natural catastrophe losses were a record $117 billion; 2025 is on track to be another record setting year, with the LA wildfires alone costing insurers an estimated $25 to $35 billion.
Read moreAmazon Lags Behind Peers in Scope 3 Greenhouse Gas Disclosures
Scope 3, or value-chain emissions, account for an average of 75% of a company’s total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, rising to over 90% in the retail sector. While challenges persist in assessing Scope 3 emissions – including data availability and quality concerns – assessing these emissions is critical to any credible climate strategy. Only by acting to assess value-chain emissions will data quality improve.
Read moreAvocado Industry Helps Reduce Deforestation in Mexico
In complex situations where environmental and human rights issues are not addressed by local regulation, shareholders can drive corporations to promote significant change by demanding more from their suppliers. This is evident in Mexico's avocado industry, where shareholder engagement, political action, and NGO efforts are tackling illegal deforestation and its impacts.
Read moreClimate Transition Planning Will Improve Business Transparency and Resilience
The year 2024 saw record-breaking global temperatures and extreme weather disasters worldwide, causing loss of life, homes, and hundreds of billions in damages. In light of this devastating year, investors are looking to the 2025 proxy season as an opportunity to encourage corporations to do more to address the financial impacts of climate change by reducing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions and investing in the clean energy economy.
Read moreA Funder's Journey to Shareholder Advocacy and Active Ownership
My first serious introduction to the concepts and practice of “active ownership” and proxy voting came in the early 2000s as the director of a newly created family foundation, the Singing Field Foundation. At that time, I joined the Environmental Grantmakers Association and began attending its conferences and those of other environmental funder affinity groups. Earlier, as a college student, I was on the periphery of the campaigns around university endowments and investments in South Africa. And, I have always felt that mission-driven organizations with invested assets should take great care that those investments not be in conflict with the mission.
Read moreWill New Wave of Natural Gas Plants Be Stranded Assets?
Natural gas proponents have long framed it as a “bridge fuel” for meeting rising energy demands, while decreasing utilities’ dependence on carbon-intensive coal. Unfortunately, the power sector is now more focused on extending the natural gas bridge than crossing it.
Read moreSmall Cap Companies have a role to play on Climate
In the United States alone, 23 different billion-dollar weather and climate disasters occurred, incurring more than $90 billion in damages in just the first eight months of the year. With these impacts cascading through corporate value chains, the business case for action on climate risk has never been clearer.
Read moreUnraveling offsetting and avoided emissions
Between now and 2030, companies must reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to minimize the risk of exceeding a 1.5°C global temperature increase. Investors want corporate climate transition strategies that deliver tangible emissions reductions and scalable net-zero solutions.
Read moreCompanies Need to Address Existential and Financial Risk of Biodiversity
Biodiversity loss is a global systemic risk. Wildlife populations have declined by an average of 69 percent since 1970, with an estimated one million plant and animal species at risk of extinction by 2050 – approximately 25 percent of all species on Earth.
Read moreInvestors Leverage Shareholder Proposals for Just Transition Impact
As thousands of large companies make the transition to a net-zero emissions economy by reducing greenhouse gases, they must not only decarbonize but also consider the real impacts of changes in their operations on their employees and the communities where they operate.
Read moreClean Energy Ratio Helps Meet Net Zero Goals
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, on behalf of the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, Teachers’ Retirement System, and Board of Education Retirement System (the NYC Retirement Systems), submitted shareholder proposals to six major North American Banks — Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Royal Bank of Canada — requesting that they disclose annually their Clean Energy Supply Financing Ratio (the Clean Energy Ratio).
Read moreDo Oil and Gas Industry Divestments Result in Emissions Increases?
As governments worldwide struggle to keep the Paris agreement’s goal of limiting global average temperature rise to 1.5°C within reach, pressure on oil and gas companies is reaching an all-time high. Global bodies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and International Energy Agency are emphatic about the urgent need for transparent, immediate, and ambitious decarbonization in the oil and gas industry.
Read morePressing the Tobacco Industry to Clean Up Its Plastic Cigarette Waste
While soda bottles and fast-food containers are usually cited as major sources of single-use plastic that escape capture and pollute rivers and oceans, cigarettes often have been overlooked as another major source of plastic pollution. Yet cigarette filters are a form of single-use plastic and, by volume, are likely the most littered form of plastic on the planet.
Read moreDeep Sea Mining Poses Risks to Biodiversity, Climate and Investors
As You Sow recently launched a Biodiversity Program in response to increasing global concern about the systemic risks to nature posed by biodiversity loss and looming ecosystem collapse. These risks include food insecurity, fresh water, clean air, climate change and the collapse of innumerable ecosystem services relied on by companies, communities and the world. The benefits of a functioning environment are at risk and shareholders are beginning to raise the alarm.
Read moreNew Standards Can Help Companies Avoid Carbon Offset Greenwashing
Shareholder scrutiny of corporate offsetting strategies is growing as the voluntary carbon market (VCM) grows, with projections it may be worth $50 billion annually by 2030. Carbon offset advocates believe the VCM incentivizes critical investments in mitigation and adaptation, even as global efforts fail to deliver on emission reduction targets. Yet companies can face reputational and litigation risks for participating in the VCM given credibility questions. Companies can reduce the risks associated with purchasing voluntary credits by aligning their strategies with best practices and procuring third-party verified high-quality credits.
Read moreInvestors Expect Science Based GHG Targets and Reporting
Shareholders in 2023 are tightly focused on resolutions asking companies to establish science-based greenhouse gas reduction targets that cover the full value chain of emissions—and to report on them. The science is clear that companies need to rapidly act to reduce emissions to limit global warming to a 1.5°C increase in warming.
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