Is water in Sweden really 25 times more valuable than water in Mauritania?
https://ssir.org/articles/entry/impact-accounting-has-an-equity-problem
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A Realist’s Guide to Investing for Good
“How would you suggest that I invest my savings of ten thousand dollars to have a positive social and environmental impact?”
The question came from a PhD student this time, but we get it a lot. Many people want their money to work for them—to preserve their financial security and to improve the world. In fact, almost 85 percent of individual investors say they are interested in sustainable investing and more than three quarters believe they can use their investments to influence the extent of climate change. In response, asset managers have created and rebranded trillions of dollars of funds as ESG (environment, social, and governance) funds targeting socially minded investors. So, it should be easy to recommend many worthy qualifying investments. Right?
https://ssir.org/articles/entry/a_realists_guide_to_investing_for_good
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Further Reflections on Fashion’s Circularity Reckoning
Ken Pucker responds to his readers’ critiques of his Up for Debate article “A Circle That Isn’t Easily Squared” and reiterates his call for a systemic shift in how the fashion industry does business.https://ssir.org/articles/entry/further_reflections_on_fashions_circularity_reckoning
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A Circle That Isn’t Easily Squared
Industries ranging from soft drinks to furniture to
electronics to fashion follow a one-way path of “make, take, and waste.” This linear operating system is straining resources, polluting oceans, and generating mountains of waste. Unrelenting pressure for growth continues to stress biodiversity and accelerate atmospheric warming, thereby increasing the intensity and incidence of drought, flooding, and migration. As a result, the public’s consent to resource-consumptive industries is increasingly at risk.https://ssir.org/articles/entry/a_circle_that_isnt_easily_squared
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Heroic Accounting – New proposals for monetizing corporate planetary impacts are alluring, impossible and perilous
Stanford Social Innovation Review
By Andrew A. King & Kenneth P. Pucker Sep. 20, 2021
Illustration by Andrea D’Aquino As concerns mount about social and environmental sustainability, an unlikely planetary hero has emerged: the accountant. A growing collection of investors, academics, and business leaders have proposed that better accounting practices can overthrow what Financier Ronald Cohen calls “the tyranny of profit” and set capitalism on a more sustainable track. This new “Impact Accounting” promises to tabulate every way that individual companies influence planetary welfare—including economic profit, employment, social equity, biodiversity, and climate—and translate all of them into a single measure of impact, represented in dollars and cents. According to Cohen and Harvard Professor George Serafeim, the resulting “impact transparency will reshape capitalism…it will redefine success, so that its measure is not just money, but the positive impact we make during our lives.” Another Harvard Professor, Rebecca Henderson, expresses the plan concisely: “Accountants hold the key to the salvation of civilization.”
Read the full article: https://ssir.org/articles/entry/heroic_accounting
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The Dangerous Allure of Win Win Strategies
Stanford Social Innovation Review
For the past 30 years, celebrated academics and business leaders have promoted the idea that companies often profit by addressing social and environmental problems. Although these proposals have been hailed as promising breakthroughs, they are unscientific and counterproductive.By Andrew A. King & Kenneth P. Pucker Winter 2021
Read the full article:
https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_dangerous_allure_of_win_win_strategies