麻豆传媒

MANY of us at 麻豆传媒 have specialist areas of weakness. Mine is physics. In the grand scheme of things, they are actually considered a strength: if I can understand an article about, say, quantum theory, then anyone can. But recently, it has dawned on me that I have a more serious weakness in my understanding of the world. One which, as I write about environmental issues, I ought to fill. The subject? Finance.

Ugh. I skim past those pages in the newspaper. As soon as somebody mentions bonds or derivatives, my brain seizes up. Frankly, I am an snob about it. I think there are higher-minded and more important things to think about than money.

But I have come to realise that finance ignorance, or f-wittery if you will, isn鈥檛 a useful state. If we are going to transition the world to a more sustainable future, reform of the financial system is a non-negotiable starting point.

The fine details of bonds and derivatives still elude me. But thanks to a documentary called by the conservation group WWF and a pressure group called , I now grasp the rudiments of the global financial system and its connections to things I care about: climate change and destruction of nature.

Here鈥檚 the technical bit; concentrate! In essence, finance is the business of transferring money from people who own capital to people who need it to fund expensive projects, in return for a share of the spoils. All too often, the first question that gets asked is, what鈥檚 my return? The second is, how quickly can I get it? And so capital frequently flows into projects that ruthlessly squeeze profit from nature, such as fossil fuel extraction, mining and deforestation. What鈥檚 more, an accounting system that greedily counts the profits, but often writes off external environmental costs, incentivises destructive practices such as dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Since the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the financial sector has invested $1.9 trillion in fossil fuel projects. Short-term incentives have created a world economy in which, according to the World Economic Forum, half of global GDP is dependent on the destruction of nature.

It doesn鈥檛 have to be this way. It would be unfair to portray all finance as rapacious, short-termist and uncaring. If that were so, we wouldn鈥檛 have seen such radical advances in clean energy technology, and all of nature would be destroyed by now.

鈥淔or all I know, my pension may be adding to deforestation, fossil fuel use, factory farming or worse鈥�

With the right incentives in place, finance can be remade as a force for good, channelling investment into sustainable businesses and technologies that help to end, rather than accelerate, the destruction of nature.

The incentives need changing and the documentary makes a convincing case that the penny has finally dropped. But change has to happen now, in this window of opportunity created by the pandemic. As we build back, decisions made by financiers 鈥� 鈥� will decide which projects get funded and hence shape the economy for decades to come. If they default to business as usual, that will plunge the planet deeper into the red.

Happily, change is happening. Some of it is driven by outside factors, such as the escalating risks of investing in projects that could be wiped out by extreme weather. Some of it is driven by consumer sentiment, such as the reputational risk of investing in socially unacceptable sectors like coal. This latter pressure point is something that many of us can apply. About 85 per cent of adults in the UK have a savings pot that is invested on their behalf for retirement. Collectively, these pots total $3 trillion. Globally it is vastly more. Few people know what their money is invested in though.

I dread to think about mine. I vaguely remember ticking a box on a form demanding that at least part of it be put into ethical funds. But I don鈥檛 know what 鈥渆thical鈥� means in this context. For all I know, my pension may be adding to deforestation, fossil fuel use, factory farming or worse.

I intend to find out. Make My Money Matter helps small investors understand where our funds are and how to move them or use them to put pressure on companies to change. Influential institutions such as the University of Cambridge are divesting from environmentally destructive industries. It is time for individuals to do the same.

If it all sounds a bit too complicated, consider that environmentally conscious financial behaviour can have a disproportionate impact, way beyond that of other consumer choices. According to Make My Money Matter, shifting your investments can reduce your carbon footprint up to 27 times as much as giving up flying and going vegan. Money is power. Wield it.