Principles for Responsible Investing

PRI: Who What When Where Why How

October 20th 2007 01:00

: UN Principles for Responsible Investment: PRI

What are Princples of Responsible Investment and Why should you care about them?

The Principles of Responsible investment are the guidelines set out by the United Nations for Fund Managers to create a Global benchmark for responsible investing. Why should you care? Well we all have money invested somehow with our Superannuation, the more pressure we put on large companies to sign up to these Prinicples the more they will have to embrace the philosophy; and this will make the world a better place: money talks.

The Aim of the Principles is to simply add the conscience element to investing. Yes we all want superior returns but signatories of the PRI have to take other things into consideration when making investment decisions. The key things taken into consideration are Environmental, social and Corporate governence factors. By taking these factors into consideration before investing signatories are encouraging corporates to improve their performance in areas such as Environmental Impact (Carbon Emissions), Human Rights. The prinicples incorporate the United Nations global compact and encourage corporations to embed these principles in the way they do business. corporates are encouraged to have set policies in areas such as human rights, labour standards, the environment and anti-corruption.

We all know that money makes the world go round and you can pretty much say that dirty money is responsible for a lot of the Damage to the Environment, terrorism, human rights violations and the list goes on. If large corporations are cut off from investment because they don't adhere to standards then they will not survive, the more money that flows into good corporations the more good will be created.

These principles are a unique way to get financial markets and leaders from the investment community to contribute to the objectives of the UN and simply make the world a better place to live in.

Many Australian Financial insitutions have signed up, and 8 trillion dollars of money under management has already committed to this project globally

but f you can believe it this is nothing...... the UN Web site has great links and has some great stuff if you want to go and check it out. CLICK HERE

The more we care the more they will do.
cheers

Louie

Bush Fire or spark in the right direction?

Bush Fire or spark in the right direction?

August 5th 2007 02:02

I guess its no surprise that Bush's recent invitation to the World's largest polluters has been greeted with audible eye rolling from the Greenies and Silent Groans from heads of State. Let's hope this is a spark in the right direction and not the beginning of the end for Global agreement on Climate Change.

The Greenies are frustrated as are the Heads of state that of course the moment Mr Bush wants to get on board the Green boat it has to be his boat, forget perfectly good upcoming global forums for discussion; APEC in September and the UN Conference in November; it has to be George W's idea and has to be in his sand pit.

All of a sudden going green is a good idea. Now this blog is groaning. This band wagon is getting mighty crowded with recent converts. I am not saying this is a bad thing, it should be a good thing except for the small detail of Politics and the fact that of course the Geroge W wants to reinvent this wheel. Forget that Eurpoe and the rest of the World- except for the U.S and Australia has been running with a perfectly good and successful system for quite some time now- we need a new one.

Maybe this is all a ploy for Bush to successfully avoid the issue at the APEC conference, maybe he isn't equiped to talk about this with the world leaders; he is merely giving a speech at the September 27/28 conference in Washington, Condoleze Rice is running the show; Does this totally scream of a man who doesn't know the subject and needs to be on familiar ground to deal with it, with a speech written by someone else?Tthis doesn't bother me except he is the leader of the Free world and this is the most important issue of our generation- still. You would like to think he would want to debate the topic every waking hour; and be able to.

Anyhow who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth, the end game here is that we need a solution for the sake of the Planet and future generations (love melodrama on a sunday mornming) let's hope the Greenies are wrong and the U.S. provides solutions not a whole heap of spanners in the very delecate works of the Treaty that is Kyoto and the system that is still taking baby steps towards a solution.