2024 Responsible Investing Themes
International asset management company Alliance Bernstein releases its 2024 responsible investing themes, which aims to provide investors with several key responsible investment issues that should be paid close attention to.
Alliance Bernstein believes that responsible investment was originally intended to avoid investing in sin stocks. As the market’s understanding of responsible investment gradually deepens, the risks and opportunities faced by responsible investment are also changing.
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Four Responsible Investing Themes
Alliance Bernstein believes that investors should pay attention to the following four responsible investing themes in 2024, namely:
- Interconnectedness of All Things: Responsible investment needs to consider the connections between different ESG factors. In past investment researches, environmental, social and governance factors are often analyzed as separate entities, but now investors need to pay attention to the connections between these factors. For example, climate change is the core focus among environmental factors, but there are also social impacts – the physical risks caused by climate change may produce climate immigrants, who may be affected by social factors such as poor working conditions and debt bondage.
- Workforce Disruption and Transformation: Generative artificial intelligence changes human work and life for investors, and also brings social risks. Automation brought by artificial intelligence may lead to the reduction of jobs and have a negative impact on labor employment. In addition, the aging of the global population and current diversity and inclusion hiring policies may lead to long-term workforce transformation.
- Emerging Markets in the Spotlight: The social and environmental issues that responsible investment needs to solve largely occur in emerging markets. For example, just transition needs to bear the risks faced by the labor force in traditional industries. Emerging markets face the most difficulties in achieving just transition due to the large number of people employed in traditional industries and the lack of clear policies and sufficient funds.
- Health of Humanity: According to statistics, global health problems cause economic losses of US$12 trillion every year, accounting for 15% of the total global GDP. The world’s population will reach 10 billion in 2050, and the pressure on public health care will continue to grow. Therefore, investors need to pay attention to the important role of human health in responsible investment.
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