Butz Christoph, Liechti Jürg, Bodin Julia, Cornell Sarah E
Thematic Equities, Pictet Asset Management SA, Route des Acacias 60, 1211 Geneva 73, Switzerland.
Neosys AG, Privatstrasse 10, 4563 Gerlafingen, Switzerland.
Sustain Sci. 2018;13(4):1031-1044. doi: 10.1007/s11625-018-0574-1. Epub 2018 May 14.
Science is increasingly able to identify precautionary boundaries for critical Earth system processes, and the business world provides societies with important means for adaptive responses to global environmental risks. In turn, investors provide vital leverage on companies. Here, we report on our transdisciplinary science/business experience in applying the planetary boundaries framework (sensu Rockström et al., Ecol Soc 14, 2009) to define a boundary-compatible investment universe and analyse the environmental compatibility of companies. We translate the planetary boundaries into limits for resource use and emissions per unit of economic value creation, using indicators from the Carnegie Mellon University EIO‑LCA database. The resulting precautionary 'economic intensities' can be compared with the current levels of companies' environmental impact. This necessarily involves simplifying assumptions, for which dialogue between biophysical science, corporate sustainability and investment perspectives is needed. The simplifications mean that our translation is transparent from both biophysical and financial viewpoints, and allow our approach to be responsive to future developments in scientific insights about planetary boundaries. Our approach enables both sub‑industries and individual companies to be screened against the planetary boundaries. Our preliminary application of this screening to the entire background universe of all investable stock‑listed companies gives a selectivity of two orders of magnitude for an investment universe of environmentally attractive stocks. We discuss implications for an expanded role of environmental change science in the development of thematic equity funds.
科学越来越有能力确定关键地球系统过程的预防性边界，而商业界为社会提供了应对全球环境风险的重要适应手段。反过来，投资者对公司具有至关重要的影响力。在此，我们报告我们在应用行星边界框架（如Rockström等人所述，《生态学会》，2014年）方面的跨学科科学/商业经验，以定义与边界兼容的投资领域并分析公司的环境兼容性。我们使用卡内基梅隆大学EIO-LCA数据库中的指标，将行星边界转化为单位经济价值创造的资源使用和排放限制。由此产生的预防性“经济强度”可与公司当前的环境影响水平进行比较。这必然涉及简化假设，为此需要生物物理科学、企业可持续性和投资视角之间的对话。这些简化意味着我们的转化从生物物理和财务观点来看都是透明的，并使我们的方法能够响应有关行星边界的科学见解的未来发展。我们的方法能够根据行星边界对细分行业和单个公司进行筛选。我们将这种筛选初步应用于所有可投资上市公司的整个背景范围，对于具有环境吸引力的股票投资领域，其选择性达到两个数量级。我们讨论了环境变化科学在主题股票基金发展中扩大作用的影响。
