Food & Agriculture Tracker examines the exposure of funds to sustainability shocks, notably through the transition to sustainable production, regional agricultural declines, or novel global policy affecting the trade of nature-dependant goods.
This report from financial think tank Planet Tracker reveals the challenges that retail investors face in identifying sustainable/ESG investment products across a portfolio of investment websites and portals.
Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are booming, synthetic ETFs are re-surfacing and semi-transparent ETFs have recently emerged – but their structures hide entrenched deforestation risk from investors. Planet Tracker identifies the key decision makers for each instrument in the growing ETF universe and calls for specific actions from index providers, ETF sponsors and investors to eliminate hidden deforestation risk in their holdings or indices.
Planet Tracker’s benchmark analysis of 37 funds in the food and agriculture sectors demonstrates that asset managers need to understand that, for their food and agriculture equity funds to be successful, they must measure, manage and monitor the natural capital risks in their investments by aligning these with sustainable food and agriculture systems to improve investment performance.
Today, a global plan to support Sub-Saharan African (SSA) economies to increase social, economic and environmental resilience is needed, in light of the systemic shocks that we already know await us through climate impacts and now COVID-19 and its detrimental impacts on conservation funding.
Reported Scope 3 emissions by 12 publicly listed European food retailers account for 44% of total emissions in the European food retail sector in 2018.
From Natural Capital to Accounting to Valuation – Commentary on IAS 41: Agriculture.
New South Wales Faces Long-Term Credit Risks as Natural Infrastructure is Threatened
Despite accounting for less than 9% of global agriculture’s market value in 2016 – compared to 22% for the meat industry, dairy is an important sector in both developed and emerging markets’ economies. 2016 estimates from the FAO suggest that a quarter of all farms worldwide keep at least one milking animal, which might include cows, goats, buffalo and/or sheep with dairy-related employment from farm to fork in the hundreds of millions.