Taking Responsible Investment onto the world stage
This year has seen some astonishing successes for FairPensions. Two years ago we were a tiny organisation which faced an uphill struggle to even meet with representatives from large UK pension funds. Now FairPensions' opinion is being sought at international conferences, and we have influenced investors worth 820 billion pounds.
FairPensions' Executive Director, Alex van der Velden, has already spoken at the Ethical Corporation Sustainable Finance Summit in London and the European Investment Round Table in Salzburg. FairPensions was also the only NGO that was invited to a Treasury Round Table at 11 Downing Street (hosted by Kitty Ussher MP) to discuss the new Myners Principles: these are principles drawn up by an industry expert (Paul Myners) outlining how investors should engage with companies they have investments in, and how investors should become more transparent.
On 5-6 November, Alex will be the third keynote speaker at the P8 summit: a meeting of 8 of the world's largest institutional investors, which aims to "advance investment strategies to address global warming and natural resource limits". Alex shares the bill with Al Gore and HRH the Prince of Wales. He will address successful strategies that institutional investors can adopt to combat climate change - and how most of them currently fail to do so. He will argue that they should adopt long-term investment strategies, where the risks and economic damage caused by climate change are a key part of all investment decision-making.
The summit is an invitation-only event, with only 32 people drawn from 8 pension funds being addressed by a range of experts on science, business, and technology, and by representatives from developing countries. These eight funds collectively steward over $2 trillion dollars, and have an important influence on world markets.