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When it comes to "greenwashing" - the practice of companies claiming they're making a positive social or environmental impact when, in fact, that's not the case - investing in green is a tough business to navigate, Jim Roth tells the Telegraph.
"The old management adage, if you can't measure it, you cannot manage it," the founder of impact-investing firm LeapFrog says. "The first step is a sniff test," he adds.
"Take a step back and think is what is going on here genuinely having an obvious and transformational social or environmental impact."
The second step is measuring, and the third is setting ESG and impact targets.
Roth says companies need to align their culture and values with ESG.
"If profit is increased by installing solar panels and re-engineering production process to be more natural resource efficient, companies are much more likely to do them," he says.
But in the case of tobacco investments, "the endowment of a lung cancer foundation is not likely to exclude impact fund managers as impact owners," Roth says.
"The challenge over the next few years will be bridging the divide," he adds. "It will require impact fund managers to scale and asset owners to engage more with emerging impact managers. Read the Entire Article