Maarten Stigter

📢 Did you hear? Fondaction and Triodos Bank are teaming up to create a fund to invest private capital in companies and activities that promote biodiversity, nature, and climate resilience - with a focus on regenerative agriculture, sustainable forestry, and nature restoration. 💡 It’s still early days, but this is a clear example of how the investor community can work together to close the nature/biodiversity finance gap. 👥 If you’re an investor interested in allocating capital towards the conservation, restoration, stewardship, and sustainable use of nature in Canada, let’s connect!

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We need to NOT ONLY FINANCE CHANGE but also CHANGE FINANCE! This was the powerful message of the sustainable finance track here at the European #bcorp summit 2024, led by the inspirational Tom Cummings and opened with the challenging voice of Sandrine Dixson-Declève. Hans Stegeman made it clear that genuine transformation requires addressing "asymmetric finance": today it is much easier to finance extraction and maintain a "growth imperative" that is disconnected from the wellbeing of society than to financially support regeneration. Hence, we must tackle three independent challenges: 1) We have to make choices in the real economy. Above all, we must eliminate unhealthy activities that are not profitable if taking into account externalities and which simply sustain the system itself, without adding social value. As a result, finance will be smaller. 2) It also means restructuring the finance sector. Finance is highly concentrated due to regulation and intrinsic economies of scale, especially in asset management, leading to value destruction. 3) Finally, we must look at institutions. We need to ensure money creation at its very source is linked to universal prosperity. This will imply an existential conversation about the role of Finance in society, Peter Blom points out. Many bankers still believe the objective of banks is to "make money from money". Hence, moving from brown to green finance is certainly good, but far from sufficient. We must safeguard the public purpose of banking, containing excessive shareholder power through stewardship or cooperative models. We must ensure global finance becomes part of the solution, rather than being part of the problem. Banking, Martin Rohner contends, must be based on and rappresentative of human values. How to get there? It starts with making the system see itself, as Otto Scharmer once again reminds us. "The success of an intervention always depends on the interior condition of the intervener.” and it requires virtuous institutions. Let's make sure that next year the finance ministers and central banks are in the room! #banking #finance #sustainability #leadership #transformation

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Investment world will shift esg focused strategy to real impact , hopefully.

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| MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT | After several months of work involving our teams, I feel great pride this morning with this important announcement: Fondaction and Triodos Bank Forge Partnership to Accelerate Positive Change of Finance. Two leaders at the forefront of sustainable finance and impact investing, are proud to announce an innovative partnership with the explicit intention to finance positive change and to change finance. Both Triodos and Fondaction have been using money for positive change for decades already, financing initiatives that contribute to addressing our most important environmental and social challenges – from climate change and loss of biodiversity to increasing social inequality. Building on their extensive track record, both entities will collaborate to accelerate the pace of change by financing change on the one hand and on the other hand working and championing for the financial sector to follow suit and to structurally change finance. “Collaborating with institutions that share our vision and values is essential to fostering the transformation needed to shape tomorrow’s economy. Our partnership with Triodos Bank and Triodos Investment Management is an exceptional opportunity to mobilize our strengths and multiply our impact on the economy and the financial sector. And by investing in each other's activities, we mutually contribute to our successes." – Genevieve Morinève Morin, President and CEO of Fondaction ✨The work has only just begun! Hadewych Kuiper (Managing Director of Triodos Investment Management) et Els Ankum-Griffioen (Institutional Investor Relations Manager of Triodos Investment Management) will be in Montreal next week as part of the Sustainable Finance Week. Hadewyck and Geneviève will also be on stage on May 15 at 9:30 AM at the Sustainable Finance Summit, alongside the Honourable Steven Guilbeault  and Julie Segal. The panel is entitled: "Transformative Finance: Challenges, Inititiaves and Impact". They will certainly have the opportunity to discuss the ambitions and intentions stemming from this partnership. #SFDMtl2024 #biodiversity #sustainablefinance #changefinance https://lnkd.in/e8qeizPn

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Couldn't agree more.... 'What’s needed is systemic investing — a new approach that embraces systems transformation, deploys capital with a broader intent, and replaces a project-by-project mentality with new methodologies, structures, capabilities, and decision-making frameworks.' Concessionary Returns are a False Flag There is a better way to deliver real alpha to investors and support a broad scope of important innovation. See https://bit.ly/3UoRYDF

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A Canadian pension fund is teaming up with a Dutch ethical bank to tackle the nature finance gap. Through this partnership, Fondaction and Triodos Bank will create a fund to invest private capital in companies and activities that promote biodiversity, nature, and climate resilience - with a focus on regenerative agriculture, sustainable forestry, and nature restoration. Fondaction’s CEO Genevieve Morin said collaborations between institutions that shared a vision and values was  essential to foster  the transformation needed to shape tomorrow’s economy. Nevertheless, the challenge remains:  finding “investable” opportunities on the ground. Triodos’ Managing Director Hadewych Kuiper said that although there was demand for these kinds of investment solutions, the limited number of suitable  activities means the partners will need time to identify a pipeline of investment opportunities before launch. The Nature Investment Hub celebrates novel partnerships like this. It is a strong signal of private sector interest  in investing in nature - and holds promise for Indigenous leaders and the conservation community across Canada who are  seeking long-term innovative finance for their activities.   We look forward to learning more about this new fund. In the meantime, we are continuing to help organizations determine when to apply conservation finance instruments and how to design initiatives to attract new types of investment. Read more: https://lnkd.in/en6JWx-Z

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This article explains “regenerative finance”: investing to fix broken systems while generating a modest return. You can participate by investing in RSF notes, providing RSF the capital to make loans to companies which have a direct impact on their communities and the environment. #impactinvesting #impactinvesting #regenerativefinance

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The Regulatory Tsunami, Bureaucracy, & Development! - Great to read the comments that Michael Jongeneel (he/him) made on the impact that the #CSRD will have on entrepreneurs in Emerging Markets. This is something that we have been "lobbying" on in EMDEs, sounding the alarm that the region is ill-prepared for the upcoming regulatory tsunami. I don't think too many people would argue against the objective of the CSRD but it's definitely lacking Strategy & Tactics to make such objective, possible, and most importantly to Do No Harm (a principle that applies to the environment but not to people). Everyone seems to be to busy with "pick-your-own-crisis" than actually working on the mechanics of a transition ...and most importantly how to best prepare for the Regulatory Tsunami. At Capitals Hub Canada we have been in discussions with leaders from the financial sector, corporate world, elected officials that, to date, we don't have any practical solutions that addresses how to make transitions attainable, affordable, and financially possible. Three important pillars are required for such a transition that will require agreement on: (1) Data (2) Capacity Building (3) Finance in complex global, regional, and local value chains. With more than 600 ESG frameworks and standards around the world, confusion reins at all level ...but once again little efforts to work on the mechanics, little interest from financial institutions to collaborate, and even worst; little interest from all sectors to organize themselves. Many hope that the EU will delay the implementation dates or that they will keep on cherry-picking sectors that are, yes, beneficial to the EU and not the Rest of the world (ROW). Some are better at lobbying $$$ (i.e. the airline industry) - just a few days ago, the EU, I would imagine thanks to lobbyist, is now drafting exemptions for long-haul flights to and from Europe. Others like Walmart have decided, a few years ago, not to wait for regulators, and implemented a solid self-funded plan that helped more than 5900 SMEs (part of their value chain) to began a transition process, removing more than 1 gigaton of CO2....seven (7) years before the goals (2030) that they had set. It's not to late to collaborate but time is not on our side. Yesterday we finished teaching another course on Impact & Sustainable Finance for startups. University like Pontificia Universidad Javeriana are some of the champion in Latin America that are contributing to close the knowledge gap.

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We have a new coalition in the Netherlands. Their agreement is called “hope, guts and pride”. It takes indeed many guts to be proud of this. 🔷 𝐆𝐥𝐨𝐛𝐚𝐥 𝐈𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: Adopting 'the most strict migration policy ever' while halving development aid, disconnecting us from global progress. 🌍🚫 🔷 𝐀𝐠𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐈𝐥𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬: Giving farmers false hope by promoting the continuation of large-scale animal farming. 🐄➡️🌾 🔷 𝐂𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐏𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐲 𝐒𝐡𝐢𝐟𝐭: Pivoting climate policy from reducing emissions to focusing on Carbon Storage, potentially benefiting major polluters and promoting more gas production. 🏭🌱 🔷 𝐔𝐧𝐟𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐬: Promising enhancements in healthcare and education without the necessary financial support. 🏥📚 🔷 𝐏𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐱: Expecting better public services while cutting budgets and offering civil servants wages that lag behind the market. 💼📉 These policies raise critical concerns about sustainability and equity—let's discuss viable alternatives! 💬🔄 This are just some highlights 😭 https://lnkd.in/ej3asAC2

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Harald Walkate and I wrote an series of articles for the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) under the title “Does sustainable investing work?” (See here for the articles and the literature review on which they are based: https://lnkd.in/eK_EWs2q ). We are welcoming reactions and participation in the debate from industry practioners and academics. We will be sharing some video inputs over the coming months. Below is a response from Steve Rocco and Matt Orsagh - thanks for contributing! Go to the articles page to submit your own response. #responsibleinvesting https://lnkd.in/eAWTUur3

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⚠⚠⚠ Free Sustainable Aspirations and Performance Data (Symbolic & Substantive CSR) ⚠⚠⚠ Throughout his dissertation, Bram van der Kroft has developed measures of firms’ environmental and social performance relative to fellow firms within an industry from granular ESG/CSR information. As of today, he is providing this data for free online for academic use at: https://lnkd.in/gCdr9z7B With this data, you can: 1.       Separately analyze firms’ sustainable aspirations, performance, reporting, policies, activities, targets, outcomes, and controversies (Symbolic and Substantive CSR) 2.       For a worldwide sample of firms in every continent (75 countries) 3.       Over a long period (2003 to 2022; yearly) 4.       Entirely free for academic use, accessible as a CSV or Stata file Therefore, you no longer have to rely on ESG ratings to measure how well firms perform on materials source management, supply chain management, business ethics, customer welfare, legal and regulatory concerns, labor practices, water management, water usage, wastewater management, business model resilience, greenhouse gas emissions, selling practices, employee health safety, and employee management. This data is also freely shared in light of creating transparency and the recent replicability crisis in finance. For further details on and validation of the data, see: https://lnkd.in/eJg_xYcM; and https://lnkd.in/esU_TYAU #csr  #esg  #sustainability  #symbolic  #substantive  #aspirations #performance  #symboliccsr  #substantivecsr  #research  #data  #free   #freedata  #workingpaper  #paper  #economics  #finance  #accounting   #management  #aom  #sim  #sustainable  #esgreporting  #policy #policies #reporting  #targets  #controversies  #environmental  #social #governance  #corporate  #social  #responsibility  

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To me, it's just so obvious that you can make an attractive return while investing in climate. Still, explaining it on paper took us 25 (nicely designed) pages. In this first Carbon Equity white paper, Bas van Beijeren, Rikkert Beerekamp and I build our argument by taking you through climate tech's market growth, historical returns and developments in the fund landscape. My favorite insights: 💰 Climate technologies’ yearly revenues are expected to grow from €5 trillion in 2020 to €12 trillion in 2030 - an annual compound growth rate of 10% 📊 Climate tech VC is at 50B p.a. today, and has been much more resilient than general VC (12% vs 50%+ decline over the last two years) 📈 More and more mainstream PE fund managers are stepping into climate tech because they don't want to miss out Most of my thinking for this piece went into creating a (MECE) overview of the fundamental long-term drivers of climate tech: 1. Efficiency and learning curves are driving climate tech cost competitiveness (already leading to exponential growth in solar, wind, EVs and batteries) 2. Geopolitical competition, driven by energy security, is redefining the rules of the game (with governments putting trillions into climate tech to win) 3. Corporates are giving clear demand signals (to capture early mover green premiums and stay competitive in the longer term) 4. Institutional investors are increasingly putting their money where their mouth is (with 200+ planning to increase their transition allocations in the next 1-3 years) 5. Individuals choose sustainability in their jobs and consumer behaviors (and are willing to pay for it) It only took two years from the first time Jacqueline van den Ende stated we needed a white paper to getting it done. I'm glad we did. 📩 Interested to read it? Drop a #comment below, and I'll make sure to send you a copy. #ClimateTech #VentureCapital #InvestmentOpportunity #Sustainability #WhitePaper

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🌱💼 Exciting Opportunities in Emerging Markets: Harnessing Nature for Sustainable Growth 💼🌱 The recent surge in prices of essentials like rice, sugar, and cocoa due to climate change effects underscores our dependence on nature for sustenance. As ecosystems face depletion, businesses and investors are reevaluating their approach towards nature. Emerging markets present unique opportunities for impactful investments, particularly in integrating sustainability measures. Companies aligning with natural processes or leveraging ecological wisdom offer significant green investment prospects. While established markets in Europe and America attract green investment, smaller enterprises in emerging markets often struggle to access funding. Integrating conservation into business models not only safeguards ecosystems but also enhances long-term profitability. The challenge lies in enabling accessibility for smaller enterprises in emerging markets. The Just Sustainability Transitions (JuST) Institute aims to address this by enhancing transparency for investors. Collaborating with global institutions like GEF, IFAD, and BNP Paribas, JuST has developed a robust methodology to measure the impact of financing, ensuring accountability and clarity for investors. Jason Spensley from GEF emphasizes the importance of accessible financing in bolstering climate resilience and empowering communities. By embracing sustainable practices and fostering financial inclusivity, we can drive positive change, safeguard biodiversity, and fortify communities against climate risks. Join us in reshaping finance for a greener, more resilient future! #Sustainability #GreenInvestment #EmergingMarkets #ClimateResilience #BiodiversityProtection #FinanceForGood

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Transportation is responsible for almost a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. This will change in the coming decades with the electrification and decarbonization of the transportation sector, impacting cars, trucks, buses, trains, and even ships and planes. Watch our video to find out how this presents a not-to-be-missed opportunity for investors! #sustainableinvesting #climateinvesting #smartmobility #impact investing #electrification #climatechange #mobility

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Congratulations to Cheng Xue for winning the Robeco Sustainable Investing Prize for 2024 for her groundbreaking paper, 'Climate-triggered Institutional Price Pressure: Does it Affect Firms’ Cost of Equity?' (co-authored with George Skiadopoulos). Her research sheds crucial light on the nexus between climate dynamics and financial markets. You can find it here: https://ro-be.co/2p8d8hy6   Well done, Cheng Xue! 🌍💼 #SustainableFinance #ResearchExcellence

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❔ How can we live well without harming the planet? A good start is to stop pursuing economic growth as a goal. As our economies grow, they use more energy and resources. This is an important cause of ecological crises. To live well now and in the future and within planetary boundaries, chasing growth should become a thing of the past. Instead, we should transform our economies to provide a good life for people combined with low energy and resource use. ❗ That is why Triodos Bank supports the call for a post-growth transition. 🌍 The best way to ensure a high quality of life for everyone without exceeding the boundaries of the planet is to move beyond growth. 📃 Interested to read more? Check out our position paper: https://lnkd.in/eyH3SBEC

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Tomorrow all growing companies will be sustainable Not so much because of their diversity initiatives or their ESG reports, but because they will be commercially mindful of the footprint of their services & products and their key dependencies for business success in the long run. Sustainability is a business model transformation and a way of driving business. It has be integrated into all core activities : 🎯 Strategy and capital allocation are strengthened when sustainability is at the center 🎯Focus on human capital : employees are systematically behind product and services success of a company so human capital mobilisation is essential to sustainable business growth 🎯Value chain management : resilience and innovation are key and can only develop if all business partners (clients and providers) are on board The winning leaders are those that see opportunities in the people.planet.prosperity equation and will think differently, considering limits as a potential to create change. Business has a great role to play in the necessary transformation of our societies. It's time to create positive, agile, circular business models as well as competitive advantages by redesigning corporate sustainability. I am convinced challenges ahead can be solved together. 🔗 More details on my website : www.orasi-advisory.com. 🌍 THANK YOU for reading, sharing and happy to discuss further with you.

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It all starts from setting the right objective: Transform the System Deep Transitions Lab #transformativeinvesting #investingforsystemchange

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Next Wednesday, June 19 at 4 p.m., Helena Norberg Hodge will be our star guest in the Reinventing Capitalism webcast series. Helena has been awarded the "Alternative Nobel Prize" for her personal work and achievements in favour of local human-scale economies. She promotes a decentralised place-based economy as the key toward Happiness Economics 1 explicit juxtaposing economic globalisation which in her view causes social and ecological degeneration and destruction. Because there is - literally - an enormous distance between the production and consumption of goods, there is little or no involvement or responsibility of producers or consumers. A local economy, conversely, is one where all economic actors have intensive personal contact, shared goals, and mutual responsibility. With environmental disruption becoming tangibly larger and more impactful, the question is not if a globalised economy will collapse, but when! Hence, we will have to reinvent ourselves in order to be able to provide for our existence in a sustainable manner. Local futures might be one interesting answer. If you want to learn more and join the conversation, make sure you're there! You can register here and participate for free: https://lnkd.in/ewPVtcRe https://lnkd.in/ec2A57JT

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