Listen to Marie Baumgarts, Sustainability Partner at KPMG Sweden and member of the EU Platform on Sustainable Finance.
Since 2018, Europe has been a leader in sustainable finance efforts, establishing its #taxonomy on what can be classified as a sustainable investment and requiring investors to disclose how far their investments are sustainable.
More recently, the European Commission opened a consultation on the entire future of the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (#SFDR).
In this conversation, we cover:
“Up until now, there have been thousands of shades of green in the market. Everyone has been able to call almost everything green and sustainable regardless of it being very, very dark green or super light green. Companies and organisations and banks, they have owned the narrative. Now with stringent definitions and with increased transparency, they will need to stick to their goals and targets in a totally new way. And that will, of course, imply a stronger commitment.”
Is it really is possible for companies to "do the right thing"?
There's very little pressure being applied to companies by investors looking at how they're actually behaving and treating human rights as a core business priority. This needs to change.
Investors shouldn't just take companies' word for what they're doing; they should investigate what the companies are actually doing regarding human rights.