ESG Club Conference 2022 – Feature
Chandra Gopinathan Senior investment manager, sustainable ownership Railpen
Bella Landymore Policy director
Impact Investing Institute
John Mulligan Market relations and climate change lead World Gold Council
of understanding what the social dimension means for the transition.” He hopes the indicator will be embedded in every pillar of net- zero engagement, so when talking to companies about decar- bonisation or capital allocation, the social implications of what it means for workers will be included as standard. Such conversations will, of course, involve industries such as mining. Mulligan described the industry as being at a “tipping point”, it is facing the challenge of not only moving towards clean energy but to automation, digitisation and electrification, too. So what does all this mean for jobs? To answer this, he pointed to mines in South Africa re-skilling their workforce and introducing new technologies. “A col- league and I went to a training centre at one of the oldest and deepest mines in the world. It was nothing to do with holding drills. It was all virtual reality joysticks.
“They were laying 64 kilometres of digital cable to allow the mine to be automated,” he said.
“That means the jobs will change, but they will be far more transferable and future proofed than they would have been previously.
“If that re-skilling was not happening then that technology and that education may not happen in those locations. Producing a re-skilled workforce is important.”
Defining it
Bella Landymore, policy director of the Impact Investing Insti- tute, said that social issues are important because people do not want to live in poverty. “More than that, we need to start understanding inequality as a systemic risk that is inextricably linked to climate risk.” She believes the S in ESG is as important as climate risk for investors. “Tackling climate change and inequality is the big- gest opportunity of our generation,” Landymore said, para- phrasing former Bank of England governor Mark Carney. She puts this link between climate and social risks and oppor- tunities at the heart of a just transition. For the Impact Invest- ing Institute, a just transition means climate and environmen- tal action, socio-economic distribution and equity, and enabling community voices. Now that the Institute has established what it means to them, how will it be funded? “We have started working with asset owners and asset managers to understand what it means to allocate capital towards outcomes in these three areas,” Land- ymore said.
She divulged that climate and environmental action means investing in initiatives like clean energy, resilient infrastruc- ture and the circular economy. “To have a positive impact on at least one of these and to not have a negative impact on the oth- ers. A do no harm principle.”
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