Climate Action and Quality Education are top priorities for sustainable investors

Climate change is the “biggest threat to security that modern humans have ever faced.” 1

Sir David Attenborough

20 million people are being displaced every year by climate change. 2 According to the The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies about 10.3 million people have been displaced by climate change-induced events in the last six months. 3 We also know that education is one of the biggest solutions we have in the fight to repair and regenerate our climate and our broader environment. 4 In fact Project Drawdown, a world leading resource for climate solutions lists education, and specifically women and girls education, as a critical top 5 solution across both climate change scenarios they consider. 5

Why? Because when levels of education rise, access to reproductive healthcare improves, as does economic activity and participation in the broader knowledge economy. As this happens, fertility typically falls. This inevitably leads to lower and arguably more sustainable levels of population growth over time. Population growth is linked to the two primary drivers of carbon emissions; consumption and production. If we look at where the majority of emissions come from though, between 1990 and 2015, the richest 10% of the world’s population (c.630 million people) were responsible for 52% of the cumulative carbon emissions – depleting the global carbon budget by nearly a third (31%). 6 Given that, it’s important that there’s an understanding that population control (so often a discriminatory narrative aimed at emerging economies) is not the silver bullet some would like to believe. Tackling consumption and production issues are, as is ensuring equality and equity for all, especially women and girls. It’s about informed choice – helping us all understand the impacts of our decision making and increasing access to us all in that decision making. Education plays a role across the board.

At Tribe, we help our clients invest their capital not only for financial return but also aligned to their values and the change they want to see in the world.

We do this via a process called ImpactDNA™. Each client’s ImpactDNA™ is expressed through the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs or Goal). As part of the process, clients are asked to “rank” the Goals in order of resonance, choosing the Goals that represent the things that most reflect the change they want to see in the world. As part of this process no Goals are discounted but a clear vision of change is created with a personal hierarchy established across all 17 Goals. This process creates a lead “family” or “group” of Goals that are used in the creation of the client’s portfolio. Over the past 4.5 years the two most popular Goals our clients have chosen in their lead group of Goals are SDG 4 (Quality Education) at 67.9% and SDG 13 (Climate Action) at 69%. The intersectionality between all the Goals runs deep, none more so than the relationship and interdependency between these two goals. 40% of all our clients (including charities and private clients 7 ) include both these Goals in their lead group of Goals.

This doesn’t mean our other clients don’t think education and climate action are critical components of the system of change that is required. Far from it. Many choose to express their support for both through systems thinking – the process through which we look at wholes, not just separate parts, and then chart multiple pathways for change. We encourage this with our clients and also use this in our core investment thesis. If we look at three of the next five most popular Goals for our clients, 50.5% choose SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), 47.7 % choose SDG 1 (No Poverty) and 43.2% choose SDG 7 (Clean and Affordable Energy) in their lead group of Goals. Agriculture, renewable energy, and economic empowerment are strong elements within these Goals, all of which support systems thinking and enable pathways that support other Goals – SDG 13 (Climate Action) in this case.

Our ImpactDNA™ process allows us to understand the dynamic and often quite broad nature of our clients’ thematic preferences. We introduce systems thinking both upstream (through our ImpactDNA™ process with our clients) and downstream (through our core investment thesis – for example, microfinance as a mechanism to drive action on climate given the relationship between women’s empowerment and climate change and the percentage of women as recipients of the microfinance funds we use). Both of these activities mean we’re able to build purposeful portfolios that are helping to create the change that is required defined in the SDGs. It also means we’re able to develop stronger and more personal relationships with our clients as we collectively invest for change. Whilst it can be helpful to have a clear vision of the change you want your wealth to assist in creating, and selecting a lead group of Goals can help with this, the intersectionality and interdependency between the SDGs means that regardless of the Goals that resonate most with you, investing in support of one or some, contributes to the overall systems shift towards a planet where everyone and everything can thrive.