Capitalism Needs a New Framework
By Melissa Gilmour, Marketing Director
I attended the Swiss impact Investor’s Association’s annual summit in Zug last week where the theme was oceans, health and consumption. There seemed to be consensus among the impact professionals in the room that Governments were not moving fast enough to address the climate emergency we faced and policy frameworks were lacking.
While individuals are making daily lifestyle decisions as consumers to combat climate change, there is a need for systems change that will provide the momentum for these decisions to converge within an efficient system and framework.
Last week Project Heather declared a climate emergency at the launch of Business Declares in London. Emergency is a strong word and we do not declare this lightly.
At Project Heather we are offering an unprecedented top down approach to change, bridging capital markets with impact to achieve the fastest adaptation towards systemic change.
A capital market for impact requires an ecosystem made up of the same finance professionals and impact advisers that met in Zug last week. Issuers and investors who can come together and bring added power to businesses that declare and mandate a purpose and intention for positive social and environmental change.
One day it may be considered abhorrent that a public market ever offered a tobacco stock or an aggressive CO2 emitter. It makes no sense that businesses are absolved of accountability from the climate emergency for the benefit of looking after their shareholders . A rapid way to show that purposeful businesses can be rewarded by society for their actions as well as brought to account, from institutions through to individual investors, is through a public market approach with an open reporting framework on impact.
At the Impact Investing Summit in Zug it was clear that there are enough relevant, individual minds to influence and solve the challenges we face quite quickly but, aside from building a fund together, there is no systems level framework to make it happen. Capitalism needs reframing.
Granted it was hard to feel these challenges from an idyllic lake in the middle of this quiet canton surrounded by alpine ranges, but at the same time you could see the sublime beauty in nature that needed protecting. It was clear that everyone at the summit felt they were going to be affected and in terms of the institutions, their immediate pain point was liquidity for their impact investments. Project Heather is here as a potential solution.
In the words of Tomas Carruthers at the United Nations Development Programme Summit this week.
“Project Heather integrates the routes most likely to move capital at the greatest speed and scale to the kinds of projects that most urgently address risks to stakeholders captured in the SDGs.”
For the next four weeks we are asking what should a business on the world’s first stock exchange focused exclusively on impact investment look like?
We are calling on the global impact community to bring us to account before we announce our impact reporting requirements. We have opened a four-week consultation window to give you a chance to be part of building the quickest solution for real systemic change. A global facing stock exchange with impact focus. A Scottish stock exchange for the world.
