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The writer is a portfolio manager and chair of sustainable investing at Brown Advisory
本文作者是布朗咨询公司(Brown Advisory)的投资组合经理和可持续投资负责人
COP26 is under way, generating debates around the investor role in tackling climate change. Many are focused on ferreting out virtue-signalling imposters among asset managers on environmental, social and governance issues.
COP26会议正在进行中，关于投资者在应对气候变化中的作用产生了讨论。许多人专注于找出资产管理公司在环境、社会和治理问题上的美德冒名顶替者。
This is important, but a bit distracting at a time when our existential dependence on a stable climate must be matched with climate solutions at scale. This requires capital and the asset management industry is in a privileged position to bring that capital along.
这很重要，但在当下有点分散注意力，目前我们对稳定气候的生存依赖必须与大规模的气候解决方案相匹配。这需要资本，而资产管理行业处于一个特殊的位置，可以带来这些资本。
We can start as an industry by acknowledging the urgency. Even if we stop burning fossil fuels, global warming will cause disruption that we can adjust to only if we preserve and restore our planet’s richest natural carbon sinks (tropical and old growth forests, peat lands, etc).
作为一个行业，我们可以从承认紧迫性开始。即使我们停止燃烧化石燃料，全球变暖也会造成破坏，只有当我们保护和恢复我们星球上最丰富的天然碳汇（热带和古老的森林，泥炭地等），我们才能适应。
Government and non-profit funding does not come close to supporting the $4tn per year the International Energy Agency estimates will be needed by 2030 to keep global emissions in check. Without new financing, natural resources may become too scarce and too expensive to support many business models.
国际能源署(International Energy Agency)估计，到2030年，控制全球排放需要每年4万亿美元，而政府和非营利机构的资助远远达不到这一水平。如果没有新的融资，自然资源可能会变得过于稀缺和昂贵，无法支持许多商业模式。
The world of investing and the lexicon of nature, conservation and competition have typically clashed. However, climate change requires us to align capital with solutions to tackle it.
投资界与自然、保护和竞争的词汇经常发生冲突。然而，气候变化要求我们将资本与解决方案结合起来。
Security analysis is not indifferent to nature. Consider a company’s cost of goods sold: building materials, food and beverages, semiconductors, reagents for recent vaccine innovations. Peel back a layer and we are talking the language of nature: trees, palm oil, coffee, gold, copper, biodiversity. It has been estimated that more than half of the world’s gross domestic product — $44tn of economic value — is at moderate or severe risk due to nature loss.
证券分析并非对自然无动于衷。考虑一下一个公司的销售成本：建筑材料、食品和饮料、半导体、最近疫苗创新的试剂。而剥掉其外皮，我们谈论的是大自然的语言：树木、棕榈油、咖啡、黄金、铜、生物多样性。据估计，由于 自然损失，全球逾一半的国内生产总值(gdp)——44万亿美元的经济价值——面临中度或严重风险。
Take-and-deplete is the assumption of traditional financial models. Today, it is more practical for investors to understand the risks to our “natural capital”.
收获和耗尽是传统金融模式的假设。今天，对于投资者来说，了解我们的“自然资本”所面临的风险更为实际。
An emerging success story is how increased investor scrutiny of palm oil production has decoupled some supply chains from environmentally-destructive sourcing practices. The majority of suppliers and purchasers now pledge zero deforestation. According to the World Resources Institute, 2020 is the fourth straight year that palm oil deforestation has been trending down. It’s a win for investors and businesses as well. The conservation group WWF reports that many sector companies benefited significantly through price premiums for sustainable sourcing.
一个正在出现的成功案例是，投资者对棕榈油生产的监督加强，使一些供应链与破坏环境的采购行为脱钩。大多数供应商和采购商现在都承诺零砍伐森林。根据世界资源研究所的数据，2020年是棕榈油砍伐量连续第四年呈下降趋势。这对投资者和企业来说也是一个胜利。环保组织世界自然基金会(WWF)报告称，许多行业公司从可持续采购的价格溢价中获益良多。
Companies will find it easier to compete and differentiate themselves once they collaborate on some new ground rules to refocus them on longer-term interests.
企业会发现，一旦它们在一些新的基本规则上展开合作，重新将重点放在长期利益上，它们将更容易竞争和差异化。
For example, under the UN Global Compact CEO Water Mandate, more than 200 companies participate in collaborative efforts with civil society, intergovernmental organisations and affected communities to advance water sustainability.
例如，根据联合国全球契约首席执行官水任务(UN Global Compact CEO Water Mandate)，200多家公司参与了与民间社会、政府间组织和受影响社区的合作努力，以促进水的可持续性。
No company can survive without water and it’s estimated that half of the world’s population will reside in water-stressed areas by 2025. Investors should increasingly take note of the businesses sharing the burden of investing in water security and other natural resources to protect their bottom lines. These are the companies better prepared for a day when new rules, price signals, scarcity or reputational risks incentivise replenishment, rather than depletion of resources.
没有一家公司能在没有水的情况下生存，据估计，到2025年，世界上一半的人口将居住在缺水地区。投资者应该越来越多地注意到，有些企业为了保护自己的底线，分担了对水安全和其他自然资源的投资负担。这些公司为新规则、价格信号、稀缺性或声誉风险激励补充资源而不是耗尽资源的那一天做了更好的准备。
New collaborative financial structures have emerged that unlock climate solutions and strong risk-adjusted returns. “Blended finance”, for example, takes development finance and improves a project’s risk/return profile through co-investments, technical assistance, incentives or guarantees.
新的合作金融结构已经出现，为解决气候问题提供了解决方案，并带来了经过风险调整后的丰厚回报。例如，“混合融资”采用开发融资，通过共同投资、技术援助、激励或担保来改善项目的风险/回报状况。
In Nigeria, for example, public money from the World Bank’s Nigeria Electrification Project plus philanthropic dollars from the Rockefeller Foundation provided support for structuring a private investment from CrossBoundary Group, a partner of Brown Advisory. This financed solar mini-grids that will provide clean electricity to 55,000 rural homes. Early results show strong internal rates of return in the mid-teens.
例如，在尼日利亚，世界银行尼日利亚电气化项目的公共资金加上洛克菲勒基金会(Rockefeller Foundation)的慈善资金，为布朗咨询公司的合作伙伴跨界集团(cross - boundary Group)组织一项私人投资提供了支持。该项目资助了太阳能微型电网，将为5.5万户农村家庭提供清洁电力。早期的研究结果显示，青少年的内部回报率很高。
While blended finance projects are designed to create environmental or social impact, there’s a lot for financial investors to like as well, such as an inflation hedge and exposure to returns that are uncorrelated with public equities and bonds.
虽然混合金融项目的设计初衷是产生环境或社会影响，但它也有很多让金融投资者喜欢的地方，比如对冲通胀风险，以及与公开股票和债券无关的回报敞口。
Investors can further be enticed by using our own jargon: the promise of an asymmetric upside, because most natural resources outside fossil fuels will be more valuable tomorrow than they are today. If asset managers signal a willingness to learn, participate and bring other stakeholders along, the opportunity is an asymmetric upside for us all.
投资者可以通过使用我们自己的行话来进一步吸引：非对称上升的承诺，因为化石燃料以外的大多数自然资源明天会比今天更有价值。如果资产管理人表示愿意学习、参与并带动其他利益相关者，那么这个机会对我们所有人来说都是一个不对称的上升空间。