Category: Links to External Postings

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Registration is now open for the Sustainability 2.0 Conference at Marquette University!

Monday, October 11, 2021, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm

Campus

Monaghan Ballroom, Alumni Memorial Union

In 2019, Marquette Business held its first ever Responsible Investment Symposium, a successful event that brought together experts on sustainable investment practices from across the country. Since that time, more companies and organizations have adopted ESG and sustainability standards, creating an emerging paradigm for responsible and ethical business practice moving into the future.  

This fall Marquette Business is excited to present the Marquette Sustainability 2.0 Conference. Expanded in size and scope, this conference brings together experts from across the country to discuss this new era of sustainability, featuring top thought leaders from academia and non-profit organizations, as well as chief sustainability executives from firms across a variety of industries. 

Keynote Speaker – Jeffrey Hales, Ph.D

Charles T. Zlatkovich Centennial Professor of Accounting at the University of Texas at Austin & Chair of the SASB Standards Board

Headshot Dr. Jeffery Hales
SASB Logo

To Register:

https://alumni.marquette.edu/sustainability

Website:

https://alumni.marquette.edu/sustainability

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IPCC steps up warning on climate tipping points (Guardian)

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/23/climate-change-dangerous-thresholds-un-report

Climate scientists are increasingly concerned that global heating will trigger tipping points in Earth’s natural systems, which will lead to widespread and possibly irrevocable disaster, unless action is taken urgently.

The impacts are likely to be much closer than most people realise, a a draft report from the world’s leading climate scientists suggests, and will fundamentally reshape life in the coming decades even if greenhouse gas emissions are brought under some control.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is preparing a landmark report to be published in stages this summer and next year. Most of the report will not be published in time for consideration by policymakers at Cop26, the UN climate talks taking place in November in Glasgow.

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Does Good Governance Lead to Better Investment Performance? (Commonfund)

The governance framework of an institution plays a significant role in its overall success. Based on our work with hundreds of higher education institutions over the past 50 years, we believe that good governance is critical to the health of the institution and the positive performance of the endowment. Most people intuitively agree that “good” governance is imperative but currently there is a dearth of quantitative research available that defines and measures the difference that it can make. To rectify this and help to move the industry forward, Commonfund Institute is embarking on a new research project titled, The Commonfund-FGA Benchmarking Study of Governance in Higher Education. 

The Study is the first of its kind and is being done in conjunction with Chris Merker and Fund Governance Analytics (FGA). FGA is a pioneer in the field of empirical governance research and evaluation of asset owners and operates in partnership with Marquette University. Their governance diagnostics are derived from decades of research and evaluation and have been used extensively to analyze the governance practices of public pension funds. This is the first time that these tools will be applied to higher education endowments.

https://www.commonfund.org/blog/does-good-governance-lead-to-better-investment-performance-in-higher-education-institutions

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Carbon Capture is Key to Companies’ Net Zero Pledges (WSJ)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/carbon-capture-is-key-to-companies-net-zero-pledges-11615975780

Many companies’ plans to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions to “net zero” rely heavily on technologies to capture carbon. Some are more speculative than others.

Nearly 1,400 companies have promised to cut their net carbon dioxide emissions to zero over the coming decades. So-called carbon offsets, where the gas is removed from the atmosphere, are central to many of these plans. The latest of the almost daily announcements: French oil giant Total said on Tuesday that it will plant a 40,000-hectare forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo to sequester 10 million tons of CO2 over 20 years.

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The climate clock is ticking and now, with Sky’s new coverage, it will make prime-time headlines (iNews)

https://inews-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/inews.co.uk/opinion/columnists/the-climate-clock-is-ticking-and-now-with-skys-new-coverage-it-will-make-prime-time-headlines-933810/amp

Starting this week, Sky News will get deadly serious in its coverage of climate change by highlighting every night the time we have left until the planet overheats.

The figure is already less than 12 years, and the on-screen ticker will be counting down, second by second, as we head towards the ominous limit of 1.5°C hotter than when the Earth’s temperature was first comprehensively measured in 1880.

The figure is already less than 12 years, and the on-screen ticker will be counting down, second by second, as we head towards the ominous limit of 1.5°C hotter than when the Earth’s temperature was first comprehensively measured in 1880. That ceiling was set in Paris at COP21, the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference, and Sky News has made its bold statement as we approach COP26 in Glasgow in November.

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IFRS Foundation Trustees announce next steps in response to broad demand for global sustainability standards (IFRS Foundation)

Important announcement on global sustainability standards:

Given the growing and urgent demand, the intention would be for the Trustees to produce a definitive proposal (including a road map with timeline) by the end of September 2021, and possibly leading to an announcement on the establishment of a sustainability standards board at the meeting of the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP26 in November 2021.

https://www.ifrs.org/news-and-events/2021/02/trustees-announce-next-steps-in-response-to-broad-demand-for-global-sustainability-standards/

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Sustainability: Who Gets to Decide? (Texas CEO)

Sustainability: Who Gets to Decide?

https://texasceomagazine.com/sustainability-who-gets-to-decide/

In September of 2020, the Big Four accounting firms announced a new reporting framework for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards. The announcement captured attention because it marked a joint initiative between the four largest accounting firms, which is not an everyday occurrence. 

When the World Economic Forum’s International Business Council (IBC) championed this reporting framework—in hopes that the more than 100 global companies populating the IBC would adopt the standards for 2021—the reporting framework gained momentum. However fast (or slow) this new ESG reporting framework is ultimately adopted, it will most likely impact how companies report their sustainability performance and could be a key component of the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” initiative.

Reporting standards like ESG and others raise important and fundamental questions about the nature of sustainability. Do reporting standards help achieve improved sustainability and increased innovation, or do they thwart sustainability and stifle innovation by creating uniformity and ease for those reporting and reviewing? How do we know what “good” sustainability performance is? Is it possible for a company or a nation to effectively measure progress toward sustainability? Are the best intentions of companies moving us toward a more sustainable world, or could they be a catalyst moving us further away from such a world? How will we know?