Featured Articles
Opportunity for Women in the Clean Energy Transition
“As we celebrate Women’s History Month, it is again a time of reflection. We delight in the pockets of progress but reiterate that there is certainly no room for complacency. The World Bank estimated that there are over 2 billion women who are without equal economic opportunity. Though in the US, numbers feel more optimistic. American women contribute more than $7 trillion to US GDP each year. In addition, they control $10 trillion in assets, a number that is expected to grow to $30 trillion over the next decade.”
Making Gender Visible: A Path to Systemic Inclusion
Public equity investors have a unique opportunity to motivate companies to design for gender diversity and create genuinely inclusive systems within their organizations and throughout their value chains. Determined to equip investors with the tools to activate their voice, my financial firm developed Investor Guidance for Prioritizing Gender in 2022. The guidance supplies engaged investors with critical questions and essential tactics for motivating companies to adopt gender-specific approaches using an integrated, full value chain approach.
Unlocking Opportunity for Female Entrepreneurs Through Non-Traditional Financing
The UN identified the need to invest in women in two of its Sustainable Development Goals. Goal 5 (gender equality) and Goal 8 (decent work and economic growth) both pay particular attention to creating opportunity for female entrepreneurs. There is immense opportunity for sustainable investors and capital providers to meet the needs of women business owners who are in need of financing to support and grow their businesses.
Climate-Smart Forestry: From Niche to Mainstream
EFM, the forestland investment company, I co-founded almost 20 years ago was started on the premise that commercial forests could and should be valued and managed for the full range of goods and services they produce – timber, carbon, biodiversity, water provision, recreation, scenic beauty, tribal and indigenous values, and rural livelihoods. The enduring and critical truth is healthy, intact and functioning ecosystems, particularly forests, are fundamental to the earth’s life support system.
Additional Articles
New Way of Developing Affordable Housing Through Partnerships with Churches
Churches are looking to use their real estate assets to address the growing housing affordability crisis and their own need for financial sustainability. Congregations are talking, and millions of homes are possible. New Way Homes, a non-profit that runs an impact investment fund for affordable housing development, and Workbench, a develop-design-build firm, have partnered to create a new development model.
2024 is the Year to Turn Goals into Climate Action
Climate action plans with specific metrics will unleash both business innovation and societal advances for all including our families, communities, and the broader economy. Clear climate action plans, coupled with state and federal policy, will accelerate the clean energy economy, bringing innovation and jobs. Clean energy is growing at the fast pace and now provides 30% of the world’s electricity, on to 40% in the next four years.
High-Powered Women to Lead Global Central Bank Forum
The 134 global members of NGFS collaborate and produce guidance on various critical topics including on supervisory practices for managing climate-related risks, design and analysis of climate scenarios and the implications of climate change for monetary policy. The collective also provides guidance for central banks on the transition to net zero and the emerging issue of nature-related financial risks.
The Benefits of Putting our Feminism into our Finances
From the April 2023 Archive - Investing with a Gender Lens is not new. Many of us have been at this for a while now. And yet 2023 is the year we stand to make significant progress in bringing more balance to both our finances and to corporate America and beyond. Gender Lens Investing is an approach to investment due diligence that seeks to incorporate gender considerations into investment decision-making.
Carbon Clean 200 Companies Outperform Dirty Energy
As You Sow and Corporate Knights recently released their 11th update of the Carbon Clean200™, a list of 200 publicly traded companies worldwide leading the way among global peers to a clean energy present and future. These companies generated almost double the returns of the main fossil fuel index from July 1, 2016, to January 15, 2024, despite geopolitical tensions that have favored fossil fuel stocks in the past two years.
