owners in DRC and created education programmes on the ground. That is the real change that comes from investor engagement. It is murky and is not black and white, but it has to be done and it takes time. Ending child labour in DRC is not going to happen anytime soon, but what you can do is make small incremental changes. Dhillon: Has that been improved by more precise measurability? This is one of the things that worries me slightly. There’s a bit of a balancing act where taxonomy is required along with some element of measurability.
Going back to the question on how does one integrate it if you are a mid-sized scheme that does not have the internal bandwidth to wrestle with these issues? We are in the business of investing and mak- ing sure beneficiaries receive their benefits. So there’s a drive to make sure this stuff is measurable, and then you come across these murky, grey, slightly complicated cases, of which there are a lot. So how is my ability to drive positive improvement improved by evermore precise and spurious measurability? I don’t have the answer but it is a dialogue that we tend to have with clients because you are going to struggle to eliminate child labour in places like India. It is part of the economic fabric of some of those villages. It is an issue that’s difficult to address. Varco: I worry that there are industries and companies that for engagement there’s no end product, such as tobacco. O’Hara: There is a point to engaging with tobacco companies. Tobacco is an agricultural industry, it has
“We know child labour and modern slavery are not acceptable; we don’t need to demonstrate a financial downside.” Patrick O’Hara, USS Investment Management
Patrick O’Hara
16 May–June 2019 portfolio institutional roundtable: ESG
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