The Week in Impact Investing: Action
The team at
TGIF, Agents of Impact!
Game stoppers. It was hard to turn away from the Reddit revolt by small traders, who outmaneuvered Wall Street hedge funds to wreak havoc in the stock markets. The action this week in markets for carbon credits
(see Agent of Impact, below), clean technologies
(No. 5), climate adaptation (
(No. 2) may be more consequential. President Biden’s executive orders on green jobs (
No. 4), health care and racial justice could have filled The Brief. Public pressure on
BlackRock helped spur
(No. 1).
General Motors swore off internal combustion engines (by 2035). Net-zero business models. Sustainable and inclusive investment theses. Tools to measure impact and promote accountability
The Brief: Climate adaptation, impact reporting, insuring smallholder farmers, imperfect food, student-centric finance, decarbonization opportunities
The team at
Accelerating climate emergency spurs innovative financing for adaptation. Investments aimed at
mitigating greenhouse gas emissions have long overshadowed financing for efforts to help communities
adapt to climate change. That is changing, as droughts, floods, storms and wildfires disrupt livelihoods, exacerbate food and water insecurity, and widen the economic divide. Investments in green infrastructure, soil health, water conservation, and digital tools for farmers can increase resiliency to baked-in weather patterns. A dollar invested in adaptation saves up to seven times that in disaster-related costs
What has prompted this movement towards collectivism?
Part of it, of course, is the coronavirus pandemic. As work grows increasingly less stable and government aid remains unreliable, those in the arts have recognized the importance of community over competition: museum workers pushing to unionize in Philadelphia; performers mobilizing to strengthen contracts in LA and New York; and entertainers in Santa Fe considering unionization after layoffs or pay cuts. While art has often been framed as an individualistic practice, collectivization could be critical to its survival.
But at the same time, Linares says, artists’ relationship to and reliance on collectives isn’t new.