{"id":13560,"date":"2020-10-19T11:03:27","date_gmt":"2020-10-19T10:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/?p=13560"},"modified":"2020-10-20T11:19:01","modified_gmt":"2020-10-20T10:19:01","slug":"investing-in-peacebuilding-how-one-fund-is-seeking-to-address-sdg16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/2020\/10\/19\/investing-in-peacebuilding-how-one-fund-is-seeking-to-address-sdg16\/","title":{"rendered":"Investing in peacebuilding: how one fund is seeking to address SDG16"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"\"<\/a>SDG16: Peace, justice and strong institutions, is arguably more abstract and subjective than many of the Goals, and it isn\u2019t at the top of investors\u2019 list of priorities – or demands for investment strategies. Most responsible investors exclude controversial weapons as standard, but, so far, that\u2019s been about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite ambitious to talk about peace in a fund,\u201d admits Dominique Habegger, who started his career in responsible investment with SAM (now RobecoSAM) back in 1996.<\/p>\n

But that is exactly what he is doing in his current role at Pury Pictet Turrettini, where he runs the Cadmos Peace Investment Fund. (…)<\/p>\n

Antoine Mach, Managing Partner & Co-founder of Covalence, which worked with PeaceNexus to develop the index, says it is based on conventional ESG criteria alongside \u201cpeacebuilding business criteria\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is probably the most original part,\u201d he says. \u201cWe look at how companies can contribute to stability, good governance and construction of peace, for example, through their hiring practises; how they create jobs. Do they create jobs only for the majority ethnic group in one country or do they have more conflict sensitivity and try also to integrate into their workforce? And do they have a similar approach with the supply chain management? We look at how companies work with suppliers. Anti-corruption and tax transparency are also very important in terms of contributing to democracy and to good governance in those countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Google, for example, meets the peacebuilding criteria because of its regional search advertisements depicting friendships between neighbouring countries India and Pakistan, which have been engaged in hostility since the 1947 Kashmir conflict.<\/p>\n

Nestle sources agricultural crops from a social enterprise that provides jobs to young people in the north of Nigeria \u201cthat could otherwise be tempted to join terrorist groups like Boko Haram,\u201d says Mach, adding that this information wasn\u2019t found through Nestle\u2019s communications, but in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. \u201cSometimes companies are not aware that they are contributing to peace in different areas and we\u2019ve helped them realise that role,\u201d he suggests. (…)<\/p>\n

Covalence\u2019s Mach says that Facebook is an example of a company with both positive and negative impacts: \u201cBad guys are using Facebook to spread hate speech – for example, in Myanmar with the Rohingya Muslims – but a lot of good people, like human rights organisations and democractic groups, are also using Facebook to promote freedom and human rights, and to work together to improve the state of society. So we are very excited,\u201d he tells RI.<\/p>\n

Asked how a \u201cpeace fund\u201d could justify financing oil majors, whose role in political instability, conflict and the climate crisis is well documented, Mach says: \u201cWe\u2019re okay to invest in certain companies that are not ideal, that may face controversies, but we also think they have a peacebuilding potential.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe engagement component has a lot of importance here,\u201d he continued. \u201cYou don’t want to engage only with the leaders, it\u2019s important to engage with companies that have some room for improvement too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCompanies are happy that we engage with them. We don’t come with the stick and say: \u2018You are bad guys\u2019. We say: \u2018Look, you’re one of the 30 companies in the Peace Fund – you\u2019d better do something, or you’re going to be out\u2019.\u201d More…<\/a><\/p>\n

Source: Responsible Investor<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SDG16: Peace, justice and strong institutions, is arguably more abstract and subjective than many of the Goals, and it isn\u2019t at the top of investors\u2019 list of priorities - or demands for investment strategies. Most responsible investors exclude controversial weapons as standard, but, so far, that\u2019s been about it. \u201cIt\u2019s quite ambitious to talk about…","protected":false},"author":665,"featured_media":13561,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_post_series":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"post_series":[],"class_list":["post-13560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-publications","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/665"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13560"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13565,"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13560\/revisions\/13565"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13560"},{"taxonomy":"post_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_series?post=13560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}