The UK has the world’s first code for investor stewardship. Improving the quality and quantity of investor stewardship will help make the code a working reality. 20/20 vision is needed to clarify what is meant by investor stewardship and to find ways to help investors and companies put this into practice building on many years of progress in UK corporate governance. Introducing value-adding stewardship programmes takes time but we anticipate full and effective implementation will have been achieved by 2020. Our ideas are aimed at the UK but we believe that they will be of value in other markets. We believe that a critical mass of investor stewards is vital. We also recognise that not every shareholder can or needs to be a good steward. There is nothing wrong in NOT signing up to the Stewardship Code when an institutional investor has products that are not suitable, or is too small, or is a non-believer in the benefits of stewardship. The findings in this report represent both our...

Natural capital – our ecosystems, biodiversity, and natural resources – underpins economies, societies and individual wellbeing. The values of its myriad benefits are, however, often overlooked or poorly understood. They are rarely taken fully into accountthrough economic signals in markets, or in day to day decisions by business and citizens, nor indeed reflected adequately in the accounts of society. The steady loss of forests, soils, wetlands and coral reefs is closely tied to this economic invisibility. So too are the losses of species and of productive assets like fisheries, driven partly by ignoring values beyond the immediate and private. We are running down our natural capital stock without understanding the value of what we are losing. Missed opportunities to invest in this natural capital contribute to the biodiversity crisisthat is becoming more evident and more pressing by the day. The degradation of soils, air, water and biological resources can negatively impact on...

Developments in New Reporting Models addresses recent calls for a new reporting model for business and forms part of the Information for Better Markets thought leadership programme of the Financial Reporting Faculty of The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW).

The attached is a presentation made by Pavan Sukhdev in Bonn earlier this year to commemorate Green Week 2008. It elaborates what TEEB really is, and illustrates the ecological, valuation and ethical challenges that lie ahead of us.

As part of the Centre for Social Markets’ Climate Challenge India Initiative, this paper looks at the state of renewable energy in India.  The challenges faced by India, projected by the International Energy Agency to be the world’s 3rd largest emitter of greenhouse gases by 2015, are fairly daunting.  Although this means there are many opportunities as well. The Centre for Social Markets (CSM) is an independent, non-profit organisation dedicated to making markets work for the triple bottom line – people, planet and profits.