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Why Sustainability Matters to a CFO

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Sustainable and actionable: A study of asset-owner priorities for ESG investing in Asia

The world’s top 100 asset owners (AOs) represent about US$19trn in assets under management. The largest, and potentially most influential, proportion is in Asia—more than a third of the total. Out of the top 20 largest funds, three out of the first five and nearly half of the total are in Asia.

Food for thought: Eating better

Decades of economic growth and development along with better governance and nutrition-specific programmes had lifted hundreds of millions of people in Asia out of poverty, as well as starvation and malnutrition. However, due to the uneven development, while a large segment of Asian's population had changed their eating habits to over-nutrition diets and worrying about lifestyle diseases like diabetes, cancer and heart diseases, there are still some countries and regions suffering from lack of nutrition.

Getting from farm to fork: The long and short of it

Rapid income growth and urbanisation will have profound impacts on Asia’s food supply chains. Urbanisation, in particular, will contribute to supply- and demand-side imbalances for domestically produced food, as farmers leave rural areas in search of job opportunities in the cities. Without a strong transition plan to manage rapid rural–urban migration across developing Asia, domestic food supply chains will be disrupted. Inadequate infrastructure, for example, could lead to food loss and discourage trade.

Achieving net zero: How to accelerate innovation

A bold innovation agenda—stretching from early-stage technology development to full commercialisation—will be essential to achieve net zero emissions by mid-century as called for by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, argues Nick Molho, executive director at the Aldersgate Group.

Liquidity premium: Managing Asia's increasingly scarce water resources

Water scarcity is a growing concern. Global water withdrawal has increased 1.7 times faster than population growth over the last century, with 64% of global water withdrawal occurring on the Asian continent. Urbanisation has also led to more spatially concentrated demand for water, and there are concerns about the over-exploitation of water sources, as well as the impacts of climate change (particularly the effects of rising sea levels and saline intrusion on agriculture).

Sustainability: The missing link

Traditionally, most businesses have sought to become more sustainable by making changes within the bounds of their direct operational control—they might switch to renewable energy sources or hybrid vehicles, or reduce paper or electricity use. Today, however, companies increasingly find that the biggest improvements can be made within their extended supply chains. This could entail setting sustainability standards, adopting new technologies to increase accountability or helping suppliers to become more sustainable.

Sustainability: Technology-enabled

Companies are starting to discover how they can incorporate new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain or the Internet of Things (IoT) to advance their environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts and the way they report on them.
 

Sustainability: Moving the conversation forward

How sustainability is understood by businesses and investors has changed dramatically since it was first considered within corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the 1960s. It has grown from being an annual report to shareholders of the actions taken in relation to a company’s broader social and ethical obligations to become an integral part of many companies’ business strategies.

Food 4.0

As Asia’s food producers aim to meet the demands of a growing population, they are also fighting against the “four horsemen” of climate change: increasing temperatures, decreasing rainfall, extreme adverse weather events and the environmental consequences of decades of intensive land use.

The IPCC report: an insurmountable challenge or a global opportunity?

The latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes a compelling case for world leaders to strive to keep global temperature rises to within 1.5 degrees Celsius. Achieving such a target will require very challenging emission cuts across all economic sectors but recent progress provides a strong basis from which more ambitious action can be taken argues Nick Molho, executive director of the Aldersgate Group.

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