The next generation of responsible investing

(the following is a cross-post from socialfinance.ca)

The Carleton Centre for Community Innovation is convening an international conference this week on responsible investing through the UN Principles for Responsible Investing (UNPRI) initiative. The Principles for Responsible Investment, convened by United Nations Environment Program and the UN Global Compact, was established as a framework to help investors achieve better long-term investment returns and sustainable markets through better analysis of environmental, social and governance issues in investment process and the exercise of responsible ownership practices.

Following the initial conference of the PRI Academic Network held at Maastricht University in September 2008, this conference will bring 75 invited academics and practitioners, including representatives from the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Caisse de Depot, BC Investment Management Corporation, Toronto Dominion Bank, and Desjardins. Over the three days, twenty seven papers will be presented by a group of international academics, inlcuding ten papers to be presented by doctoral and masters students from around the world to encourage the next generation of academics on this topic. A special themed issue of the Journal of Business Ethics (JoBE) will take the best qualitative papers on Responsible Investing presented at the conference selected by the program committee and subject to the usual peer-reviewed process of the Journal.

Karim Harji from Social Finance will be blogging from the conference to capture some of the key themes and areas of discussion.

You can follow Karim's blogs on the Social Finance website.