THE sustainability agenda around the world seems to have accelerated this year despite the Covid-19 crisis, says UK-based fund manager Schroders.
“If you look back to the global financial crisis of 2008/09, for example, things like social interest in sustainability or climate change, or media coverage of those topics, roughly halved over the first nine months or so of the crisis. This time around, those things have been very, very stable since the start of the year,” Andy Howard, global head of sustainable investments, said at the Schroders Digital International Media Conference 2020 in London last week.
“There has been a continued focus on sustainability that logically, you might have thought would have received a little less focus [because of the challenges brought about by Covid-19].”
In the last few months alone, three major Asian economies — China, Japan and South Korea — have made commitments to reach net-zero emissions. In October, Japan and South Korea pledged to reach net zero by 2050 and in late September, China committed to achieving net zero by 2060.
Net zero means reaching a balance between the greenhouse gases put into the atmosphere and those taken out.
On the home front, Malaysia’s state-owned oil and gas producer Petroliam Nasional Bhd (Petronas) announced earlier this month that it aims to become a net-zero emitter of greenhouse gases by 2050. It plans to do so by increasing its investments in renewable energy.
The continued focus on sustainability is also coming through in policy action. “If you look at the EU, for example, around a third of the budget that it has earmarked for investment is directly tied to green goals, to net zero goals. So, we’re seeing in many ways, many governments around the world really looking to use the recovery from the crisis as a way of stimulating and kick-starting the changes that we’ve been talking about for a long time but frankly, have struggled to see come through at the scale and volume needed,” Howard remarked.