The federal government’s decision to invest in water is garnering praise from the Green Budget Coalition, an alliance of 21 environmental and conservation groups. However, coalition members say they are disappointed that last week’s budget contained no measures that would help transform the country to a green economy.
“We are encouraged to see new investments in Canada’s freshwater,” said Barry Turner, chair of the Green Budget Coalition, “including for cleaning up Areas of Concern and upgrading First Nations’ infrastructure, as well as for protection from invasive species in the face of the current Asian Carp threat. Federal leadership is crucial to protecting Canada’s limited freshwater resources and wetlands. We are also pleased to see funding to continue Canada’s valuable natural capital indicators for two more years.”
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty also announced that Ottawa would spend $100 million over four years to support clean energy technology in the forestry sector.
Still, there’s concern that the budget’s stated objectives of green jobs and growth were not accompanied by action.
“Amidst International Year of Biodiversity, in the lead-up to hosting the G8 and G20, we are disappointed that the budget contained no new funding to protect our biodiversity and to meet our commitments under the Convention on Biological Diversity,” said Mara Kerry, Nature Canada’s Conservation Director.
“Furthermore, this budget was a critical missed opportunity to invest in clean energy jobs and to live up to the climate change commitment to developing countries reiterated in the Throne Speech,” said Tim Weis of the Pembina Institute. “Canada will be falling behind countries worldwide in supporting clean energy and thus missing out on the numerous economic advantages available to those leading the way to a greener economy.”
The coalition also expressed concern over reduced funding to Environment Canada, Natural Resources Canada and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, as well as the extension of the Mineral Exploration Tax Credit.
Ottawa’s proposed new Red Tape Reduction Commission is risky, the coalition says, as is the move to delegate responsibility for environmental assessments of energy projects to the National Energy Board and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.
In last year’s budget, the government said it would commit $1 billion to a Clean Energy Fund and $1 billion to a Green Infrastructure Fund, both over five years. To date, the feds have announced funding for three carbon capture and storage projects under the Clean Energy Fund, worth $466 million.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Monday, March 8, 2010
Happy (sad) International Women's Day
It’s International Women’s Day. But there’s not much to celebrate in the boardrooms of corporate Canada. Catalyst is a nonprofit membership organization working globally with businesses and the professions to build inclusive workplaces and expand opportunities for women and business. Their recent report, 2009 Catalyst Census: Financial Post 500 Women Board Directors, tells the same sad story we have heard for many years about women’s lack of representation on major business boards.
In 2009, 44.9% of public companies have no women on their Board and 28.5% have one women director. Those are shameful numbers. In both 2007 and 2009 less than one–fifth of companies had three or more women on their boards.
A 2006 paper by Vicki Kramer, Alison Konrad and Sumru Erkut Critical Mass on Corporate Boards: Why Three or More Women Enhance Governance finds “The number of women on a board makes a difference. While a lone woman can and often does make substantial contributions, and two women are generally more powerful than one, increasing the number of women to three or more enhances the likelihood that women’s voices and ideas are heard and that boardroom dynamics change substantially.
The magic seems to occur when three or more women serve on a board together. Suddenly having women in the room becomes a normal state of affairs. No longer does any one woman represent the “woman’s point of view,” because the women express different views and often disagree with each other. Women start being treated as individuals with different personalities, styles, and interests. Women’s tendencies to be more collaborative but also to be more active in asking questions and raising different issues start to become the boardroom norm. We find that having three or more women on a board can create a critical mass where women are no longer seen as outsiders and are able to influence the content and process of board discussions more substantially.”
It’s no better in boardrooms around the world according to the World Economic Forum’s Corporate Gender Gap Report 2010. The first study to cover the world’s largest employers in 20 countries, it also benchmarks them against the gender equality policies that most companies should have in place but are, in fact, widely missing.
“The findings of The Corporate Gender Gap Report are an alarm bell on International Women’s Day that the corporate world is not doing enough to achieve gender equality. While a certain set of companies in Scandinavia, the US and the UK are indeed leaders in integrating women, the idea that most corporations have become gender-balanced or women-friendly is still a myth. With this study, we are giving businesses a one-stop guide on what they need to do to close the corporate gender gap,” said Saadia Zahidi, Co-author of the report and head of the Forum’s Women Leaders and Gender Parity Programme.
In 2009, 44.9% of public companies have no women on their Board and 28.5% have one women director. Those are shameful numbers. In both 2007 and 2009 less than one–fifth of companies had three or more women on their boards.
A 2006 paper by Vicki Kramer, Alison Konrad and Sumru Erkut Critical Mass on Corporate Boards: Why Three or More Women Enhance Governance finds “The number of women on a board makes a difference. While a lone woman can and often does make substantial contributions, and two women are generally more powerful than one, increasing the number of women to three or more enhances the likelihood that women’s voices and ideas are heard and that boardroom dynamics change substantially.
The magic seems to occur when three or more women serve on a board together. Suddenly having women in the room becomes a normal state of affairs. No longer does any one woman represent the “woman’s point of view,” because the women express different views and often disagree with each other. Women start being treated as individuals with different personalities, styles, and interests. Women’s tendencies to be more collaborative but also to be more active in asking questions and raising different issues start to become the boardroom norm. We find that having three or more women on a board can create a critical mass where women are no longer seen as outsiders and are able to influence the content and process of board discussions more substantially.”
It’s no better in boardrooms around the world according to the World Economic Forum’s Corporate Gender Gap Report 2010. The first study to cover the world’s largest employers in 20 countries, it also benchmarks them against the gender equality policies that most companies should have in place but are, in fact, widely missing.
“The findings of The Corporate Gender Gap Report are an alarm bell on International Women’s Day that the corporate world is not doing enough to achieve gender equality. While a certain set of companies in Scandinavia, the US and the UK are indeed leaders in integrating women, the idea that most corporations have become gender-balanced or women-friendly is still a myth. With this study, we are giving businesses a one-stop guide on what they need to do to close the corporate gender gap,” said Saadia Zahidi, Co-author of the report and head of the Forum’s Women Leaders and Gender Parity Programme.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Social Capital Partners - the story continues
For many of you who read this blog, the Social Capital Partners story will be familiar to you. On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to hear Bill Young speak, and once again I was inspired, and I thought -this is a story worth repeating.
Bill Young came into a lot of money at the time of the technology stock frenzy, and he used it to found Social Capital Partners in 2001. He wanted to figure out the answer to the question “is there a way to harness market forces to do social good?” He held a contest for business plans for real projects that would be profitable both financially and on social metrics, with the prize being funding by SCP of the project. The winner was Inner City Renovation, a fascinating project based in Winnipeg that helped recipients of social housing gain valuable and transferable skills in the construction trades by renovating houses that would become social housing units. Inner City Renovation was followed by a variety of other projects across the country, all with quantifiable social and financial aims. This was what Mr. Young calls Phase 1 of SCP, where “we proved that you can make these double bottom line companies work.”
Five years later, Mr. Young realized that although they were doing good work, SCP "had not changed the landscape. We wanted this to become the prevalent model and it wasn’t.” In order to move ahead, he identified two things. First, they had to figure out how to engage the private sector in what they were doing, and second they had to find a way to make the projects more replicable so that they could do more projects. The solution was to work with franchises. The benefit being that the business end of things was already being taken care of by the franchisor and SCP needed to focus only on the social returns. So, SCP loaned the franchisee the money to buy the franchise on the condition that the franchise then employ people from the job ready pool of applicants that SCP was working with. This too was successful, and constituted Phase 2.
But it wasn’t enough either. Now Mr. Young wants to change the way HR works with respect to entry level employees. His new 10 year vision is for every company to have a social hiring program integrated into their HR function and reported on using standard CSR mechanisms. He believes that “employment outcomes of people hired through these channels will be as good or better than those of people hired through regular channels.” And he’s in the process of creating a pilot project that will demonstrate this. “In order for this (initiative) to scale up, we have to prove the economics of it.”
This summary gives you the bare bones. I can’t do justice to the humour, the eloquence and the inspiration provided by Bill Young. Sometimes it seems like the S in ESG gets short shrift, and it takes someone like Bill Young to bring it all back into focus.
Bill Young came into a lot of money at the time of the technology stock frenzy, and he used it to found Social Capital Partners in 2001. He wanted to figure out the answer to the question “is there a way to harness market forces to do social good?” He held a contest for business plans for real projects that would be profitable both financially and on social metrics, with the prize being funding by SCP of the project. The winner was Inner City Renovation, a fascinating project based in Winnipeg that helped recipients of social housing gain valuable and transferable skills in the construction trades by renovating houses that would become social housing units. Inner City Renovation was followed by a variety of other projects across the country, all with quantifiable social and financial aims. This was what Mr. Young calls Phase 1 of SCP, where “we proved that you can make these double bottom line companies work.”
Five years later, Mr. Young realized that although they were doing good work, SCP "had not changed the landscape. We wanted this to become the prevalent model and it wasn’t.” In order to move ahead, he identified two things. First, they had to figure out how to engage the private sector in what they were doing, and second they had to find a way to make the projects more replicable so that they could do more projects. The solution was to work with franchises. The benefit being that the business end of things was already being taken care of by the franchisor and SCP needed to focus only on the social returns. So, SCP loaned the franchisee the money to buy the franchise on the condition that the franchise then employ people from the job ready pool of applicants that SCP was working with. This too was successful, and constituted Phase 2.
But it wasn’t enough either. Now Mr. Young wants to change the way HR works with respect to entry level employees. His new 10 year vision is for every company to have a social hiring program integrated into their HR function and reported on using standard CSR mechanisms. He believes that “employment outcomes of people hired through these channels will be as good or better than those of people hired through regular channels.” And he’s in the process of creating a pilot project that will demonstrate this. “In order for this (initiative) to scale up, we have to prove the economics of it.”
This summary gives you the bare bones. I can’t do justice to the humour, the eloquence and the inspiration provided by Bill Young. Sometimes it seems like the S in ESG gets short shrift, and it takes someone like Bill Young to bring it all back into focus.
Monday, March 1, 2010
ESG: focus on reducing risk, not adding return
Today’s purchase of RiskMetrics by MSCI marks the ascendance of SRI as a tool to identify risk, rather than one that adds alpha to portfolios. MSCI Inc. is a leading provider of investment decision support tools to investment institutions worldwide. The company’s flagship products are the MSCI International Equity Indices, which include over 120,000 indices calculated daily across more than 70 countries, and the Barra risk models and portfolio analytics, which cover 58 equity and 49 fixed income markets. RiskMetrics is a leading provider of risk management and corporate governance products and services to the global financial community. Following their purchase of ISS in 2007, they have become well known to the SRI community after snapping up Innovest and most recently KLD.
In a conference call this morning, Ethan Berman of RiskMetrics said “the need to understand risk as part of the investment process is critical” and that the two companies will combine their risk management capabilities to provide a ‘unified language of risk’.
SRI got it’s moment in the sun when Henry Fernandez, Chairman and CEO (isn’t that a governance faux pas?) of MSCI discussed one of the reasons the two companies complement each other. “One clear example of that kind of revenue synergy comes in the environmental, social and governance space that RiskMetrics has been expanding on. We’re excited about the potential to leverage the research, the analytics and the data of RiskMetric’s ESG business to create global indices that will enable us to offer benchmark products for global socially conscious investors. That’s just one example of the synergies that we can generate with this combination.”
However, the idea of improving corporate performance through shareholder action doesn’t suit this model. Asked how ISS and the governance business fits into the new company, Mr. Fernandez answered “The core businesses that we want to build in this combined company are equity performance indices, equity portfolio management tools, fixed income portfolio management tools and the risk management tools. When you look at the ISS business in the context of that, it obviously becomes less core, less mainstream to us.”
Significant consolidation has occurred in the SRI industry over the past few years, and clearly new opportunities are now presenting themselves for our entrepreneurs.
In a conference call this morning, Ethan Berman of RiskMetrics said “the need to understand risk as part of the investment process is critical” and that the two companies will combine their risk management capabilities to provide a ‘unified language of risk’.
SRI got it’s moment in the sun when Henry Fernandez, Chairman and CEO (isn’t that a governance faux pas?) of MSCI discussed one of the reasons the two companies complement each other. “One clear example of that kind of revenue synergy comes in the environmental, social and governance space that RiskMetrics has been expanding on. We’re excited about the potential to leverage the research, the analytics and the data of RiskMetric’s ESG business to create global indices that will enable us to offer benchmark products for global socially conscious investors. That’s just one example of the synergies that we can generate with this combination.”
However, the idea of improving corporate performance through shareholder action doesn’t suit this model. Asked how ISS and the governance business fits into the new company, Mr. Fernandez answered “The core businesses that we want to build in this combined company are equity performance indices, equity portfolio management tools, fixed income portfolio management tools and the risk management tools. When you look at the ISS business in the context of that, it obviously becomes less core, less mainstream to us.”
Significant consolidation has occurred in the SRI industry over the past few years, and clearly new opportunities are now presenting themselves for our entrepreneurs.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)