Liontrust Sustainable Investment Annual Review 2022 - Flipbook - Page 40
2023 proactive engagement intiatives
We prioritise proactive engagement initiatives, in collaboration
with our Advisory Committee, at the beginning of each year. We
assess how our holdings are positioned on these issues and, where
appropriate, define target companies with whom we will engage.
The main change from last year is that we will move our efforts and
objectives within Improving corporate diversity into our Ensuring
worker wellbeing proactive engagement initiative.
Preventing irreversible
damage from the
climate crisis
1
2
Preserving &
restoring nature
Ensuring worker
well-being
3
5
Encouraging the transition
to sustainable investment
As well as continuing our efforts to increase corporate disclosure of ESG impacts, impact metrics,
mitigation efforts and performance, our team will now focus on delivering improvements through
the following four proactive initiatives:
Preventing irreversible damage from the climate crisis
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC)’s AR6 report published in March, the world is highly likely
to surpass the target of keeping global temperature rises at 1.5C as
early as the 2030s. Furthermore, a widespread lack of progress on
implementing greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction policies means even
meeting a 2C limit looks much harder now.
The IPCC report makes it clear that deep and immediate reduction
in GHG emissions is required across all sectors; the report also
emphasises the need to invest in adaptation to counter the impacts
of climate change.
There is a rapidly narrowing window of opportunity to enable climate
resilient development and the report makes it clear that finance,
technology and cooperation are critical enablers for accelerated
climate action.
In 2023 we will:
• Continue to speak to investee companies about decarbonisation
strategies and monitoring performance on near-term absolute
emissions reduction targets, ensuring that we have engaged with the
remaining companies that contribute towards 80% of fund emissions
and asking for split gas accounting for methane where appropriate.
• Reduce the direct emissions (scope 1 and 2) of all SF funds to emit
25% less by 2025 and 50% less by 2030 as compared to the
fund benchmarks as at the end of 2019, as part of our Net Zero
Asset Manager Initiative (NZAMI) commitment
• Monitor and disclose data and progress on NZAMI
• Increase the number of investee companies that are aligned with
the Paris Accord
• Continue to challenge banks on financing the transition
We recognise the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions across
the economy to limit the negative impacts stemming from the climate
change emergency. The message could not be starker, nor more
urgent in its call for action.
Objective: To encourage companies to adopt strategies to reduce
absolute carbon emissions at a rate consistent with limiting global
warming to 1.5 degrees. We want to ensure companies can change
in a timely, just and profitable way and have robust strategies and
targets in place to achieve this.
40 - Liontrust Sustainable Investment: Annual Review 2022