This is the second year running that Tokyo has hosted an international conference on sustainable investment. Last October’s ASrIA conference attracted 300 delegates over the two days. This year’s UNEP Finance Initiative attracted over 500 people who came to hear about latest developments in SRI in Emerging Markets, Shareholder Engagement with a special session on the Carbon Disclosure Project (cdproject.net), SRI strategies for Pension Funds, Sustainability Reporting and SRI risk issues in banking and insurance.

Discussion spilled into the corridors about how UNEP FI could help steer more finance towards emerging markets, for example into Biodiversity Investments related to sustainable forestry and water catchment management, community development, eco-tourism and the like. However, the greatest point of interest seemed to be the thorny issue of the UN’s own Pension Fund policies on SRI. Delegates heard from Richard Grottheim how the Swedish State Pension scheme has adopted an approach to SRI based on universal values to which Sweden subscribes. Guess how these are defined? By UN Conventions on issues as diverse as child labour and environmental protection. More and more pension funds in other countries including Japan, Holland, Australia, Switzerland, the UK and USA have SRI policies and the need for the UN to show leadership is very evident. Thankfully Klaus Toepfer, UNEP’s Executive Director acknowledged this too and resolved to take the matter further.

The conference saw the winners announced for the first Royal Awards for Responsible Investment. They were Calvert Group (US), Rabobank (Holland) and the Australian Pension Fund, PSS-CSS/BT Financial Group. The occasion also led to the formalisation of a UNEP FI Asian Task Force and the release of the Tokyo Principles to promote further action by financial institutions towards a sustainable society. The launch statement said:

“From both its population significance and rapid pace of economic development, the Asia Pacific region’s impact on the global environment is significant. Therefore the promotion of finance that supports sustainable society, in particular finance that promotes environmental considerations, is called upon”.

Japan’s leadership in sustainable investment in Asia is to be applauded. There is still a long way to go before we have sustainable societies across the region and ASrIA looks forward to working with the Task Force to further that goal.