In the sustainable journey of the 21st century, investment funds must show unavoidable compliance with this global reference, so much so that Cristina Sánchez, executive director of the UN Global Compact Spain and co-president of the Local Networks Council of the UN Global Compact, highlights how « In the recent United Nations week, this issue had great prominence, since the capacity of the private sector to mobilize financial resources and drive innovation is essential to achieve the SDGs.
As Sánchez emphasizes: «Achieving the SDGs by 2030 requires more private investment, especially in developing countries. Without solid economic investment, sustainable development is not viable, which is why sustainable finance is emerging as the only way forward.” And it highlights how this market is growing at a good pace, with projections of reaching 40 billion dollars in the coming years.
«The unification of criteria (concludes), the overcoming of structural barriers (lack of transparency and risk-return mismatch), and the need for a deeper integration of sustainability in the markets are essential in this process, in a market without rules common information on the different objectives and goals for private sector agents. Given this objective, Seville will host (summer 2025) the United Nations Conference on Financing for Development, in line with UN initiatives, such as the Coalition of Chief Financial Officers for the SDGs (CFO Coalition) and the Forward Faster of sustainable finances (to execute quantifiable and specific commitments linked to five key themes of the 2030 Agenda).
Carlos García Ciriza, president of ASEAFI, emphasizes, for his part, that the consideration of the SDGs in investment funds has become a central part of the approach of many managers: “The financial sector has understood that the SDGs not only represent a social and environmental commitment, but also a value added tool for investors.
García Ciriza highlights how this trend is especially observed “in fixed-income and variable-income funds that prioritize sectors or projects with positive impact in key areas such as reducing the carbon footprint, access to clean energy, or the development of sustainable infrastructure.” .
67% is the percentage of respondents surveyed by SpainNAB who use SDGs to measure the impact of their investments
Setting goals, monitoring, and reporting on them are already part of the compliance of financial companies. An environment in which Marta Olavarría, Academic Director of Training Programs in Sustainable Finance at the IEB, is optimistic: «Sustainable investing based on ESG criteria is on an upward trend. “The number of investment funds that use the SDGs as asset selection criteria has tripled in the last three years.” Performance in which companies must ‘do their homework’ on issues such as health and well-being, gender equality, clean energy, decent work, economic growth, climate action…
The CSRD directive regulates corporate reporting on sustainability
“This growth (adds Olavarría) would be largely driven by a series of factors, such as greater demand for sustainable investment options by investors and an international regulatory environment, mainly based on transparency and reporting.”
A global task in which training becomes a strategic tool: «Sustainability represents a new approach that affects all types of companies and sectors and that must be integrated transversally into organizations, impacting various areas, processes and in systems.
On the ground, Esther Marín, director of CBNK Asset Management and Sustainability, points out how the sector contemplates more and better the CSRD (the directive on corporate information on sustainability). «In this first year of dissemination (he comments), we worked on identifying the new data required, thus involving more areas to extract and generate this new information. “The CSRD has introduced the concept of ‘double materiality’: reporting both the financial impacts of sustainability and the company’s effects on the environment and society.”
Private financial assets in SDG reach 200 trillion dollars in the world
In the case of Georgina Sierra, director of the Financial Assets Department at Diverinvest Asesoramiento EAF, she points out how “while the SDGs are an inspiring framework, the SFDR (the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation) is a strict rule that requires funds report in detail on its sustainable characteristics. “Integrating both into sustainable investing is essential for capital to flow to companies and sectors that make a real difference to sustainable development.”
Expanding
In this environment, last October the sustainability and impact consultancy Transcendent and the Ontier law firm celebrated the second edition of Impact Day, a 21st century social responsibility ‘summit’. As Angel Pérez Agenjo, managing partner of Transcendent, highlights: «Impact investment seeks generate a positive social or environmental impact in addition to a financial return. In Spain it is experiencing significant growth, especially in the private equity funds segment, whose assets under management increased by 32% in 2023.
«It is expected (he concludes) that this trend will continue in the coming years, driven by initiatives such as the Cofides Social Impact Fund, which will allocate 400 million to the impact economy. In this environment, Spain is positioned as the fourth country in the world in public and public-private impact investment initiatives and the second in the EU.
#Sustainable #Development #Goals #set #investment #agenda
