Piet Klop
UBS Asset Management (‘UBS-AM’) has announced the launch of a sponsored research project with Wageningen University & Research (WUR) in the Netherlands and Harvard University, to develop an impact measurement framework and methodology that tackles food security, the United Nation’s (UN) second Sustainable Development Goal (SDG).
The aim of the research is to build scalable models that can be applied to global listed equities of companies that sell technologies that can improve agriculture yields and access to nutritious food.
The development of the framework is in partnership between pension fund manager PGGM and UBS Asset Management. UBS-AM initiated the research project two and a half years ago, after its Sustainable Investment team were selected by PGGM to manage a €1.5 billion mandate of listed impact equities.
UBS-AM’s approach leverages academic expertise to develop impact measurement methodologies for four impact categories including climate change and air pollution, access to clean water, health and food security. The impact metrics are aligned with those suggested for the relevant UN Sustainable Development Goals.
“Our client PFZW, the pension fund for the Dutch healthcare sector, selected food security as one of its priority areas for investments in solutions with real world impact.
With a world population approaching 9 billion in 2030, it is pretty evident that providing food to every person poses a great challenge, especially if we consider aspects of nutritional quality, access to food, and resource productivity,” said Piet Klop, senior adviser of responsible investment at PGGM.
In order to tackle such a complex issue, we partner with the best in the finance and academic community to develop a replicable, science-based methodology for measuring impact on food security.
We are still in the early days, but are happy to lead the charge and hope to demonstrate that mainstream investors can deliver both market-rate returns and measureable impact.”
WUR, a leading university in the Netherlands that focuses specifically on the theme of healthy food and living environment, will research the link between technologies produced by listed companies and agriculture yields in different parts of the world. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is building models that link access to nutritious food by deprived communities.
“Wageningen and Harvard’s research will focus on just four food security related metrics,” said Dr. Dinah A. Koehler, executive director in the Global Sustainable Equities team at UBS Asset Management. “Building these models is challenging given the complexity of our global food system.
Based upon our experience building impact models for climate change and water, we believe we have established a solid foundation for building out our impact measurement framework.”
UBS AG News Release, 21 June 2018 Page 2 of 4 In conjunction with UBS-AM, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has been working on developing impact models for climate change and air pollution, health, and food security.
Harvard Chan School is a global leader in air pollution modelling and public health impacts dating back to seminal work in the 1980s, and has developed interdisciplinary models to assess the social and environmental impacts of climate change. In addition, City University of New York (CUNY) was contracted by UBS-AM to develop the impact models for water scarcity, leveraging their groundbreaking global water risk models.