Ā鶹ֱ²„app

(photo by Johnny Guatto)

ā€œWe have a responsibility to take decisive action on climate changeā€: University of Toronto president

Meric Gertler announces climate change challenge, new investing strategy

University of Toronto President Meric Gertler today unveiled a 14-point plan of specific, targeted actions that aim to make a difference on climate change now.

Gertler outlined Ā鶹ֱ²„appā€™s plan to battle climate change in a bold report, Beyond Divestment: Taking Decisive Action on Climate Change

Gertler said Ā鶹ֱ²„appā€™s approach to the investment of its endowment and pension funds should be broadened to consider environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors when appraising the long-term performance of firms in which it holds direct investments.

Beyond Divestment also outlines a plan of decisive action that calls on every facet of the University ā€“ as a leader in research, teaching, and as an energy consumer ā€“ to join in the fight against climate change. 

ā€œWe must take action to limit the rise in global temperatures if we are to avoid catastrophic impacts on the planet and humanity,ā€ Gertler said. ā€œUniversities in particular have a crucial and unique role to play in helping to meet that challenge, and as a publicly supported academic institution, the University of Toronto has a responsibility to take decisive action.ā€ 

 is a response to the Presidentā€™s Advisory Committee on Divestment from Fossil Fuels. That committee, led by environmental engineering professor Bryan Karney, last December. The committee recommended that the University adopt a strategy of targeted and principled divestment as well as a number of initiatives in the broader field of sustainability.

Ā鶹ֱ²„appā€™s $6.5 billion long-term investments, mostly in pension and endowment funds, are managed by the University of Toronto Asset Management Corporation (UTAM). Gertler said he will ask UTAM to:

  • Articulate principles that will enable consideration of ESG factors in undertaking direct long-term investments;
  • Initiate the process to become a signatory to CDP (formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project);
  • Evaluate signing onto the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment initiative;
  • Determine ways in which it can vote proactively and deliberately on shareholder resolutions aimed at reducing climate-related risk for firms in which they are directly invested;
  • Evaluate signing the Montreal Carbon Pledge, which commits investors to measuring and publicly disclosing the carbon footprint of their investment portfolios every year;
  • Report annually on its efforts to assess ESG factors in making its investment decisions.

Finally, given the growing recognition of the importance of climate-related risk, the University should give serious consideration to extending a similar ESG factor-based approach to its indirect investments.

Gertler thanked Karney and the committee for their work.

Karney welcomed Beyond Divestment. ā€œIt is a thoughtful, ambitious, transparent and practical report, which certainly creatively takes our essential principles and works them out for the University. Significantly, the report calls on every part of the University to join in the fight against climate change and creates principles and approaches that will intelligently guide us to be progressively more sustainable in the future,ā€ he said.

While the divestment committee chaired by Karney had concluded a ā€œa blanket divestment strategy would be unprincipled and inappropriateā€ it had recommended that Ā鶹ֱ²„app divest immediately from fossil fuels companies that show ā€œblatant disregardā€ for the 1.5 degree C threshold that forms the basis of the Paris Agreement.

Gertler confirmed that the University does not hold direct investments in any of the companies cited by the committee but he also said that Ā鶹ֱ²„app should broaden its focus beyond fossil fuel companies, since such companies only account for a quarter of Canadaā€™s greenhouse gas emissions, with the balance produced by other sectors such as transportation, housing and manufacturing. 

ā€œAn approach that considers ESG factors ā€“ including climate-related risk ā€“ as they pertain to all sectors of our economy would seem to offer the best chance of success in meeting the challenge of climate change, while fulfilling our fiduciary dutiesā€ to the Universityā€™s pension and endowment fund beneficiaries, the president argued. Such an approach would allow Ā鶹ֱ²„app to direct its investments actively, in a targeted and dynamic way, appraising the long-term performance of individual firms in a manner that accounts for their ESG practices, including climate-related risk. It could also take into consideration social considerations, such as the rights and wellbeing of Indigenous communities. 

 

 

Although the Karney committee had recommended that Ā鶹ֱ²„app develop its own method of evaluating fossil fuels companies to determine whether they have disregarded the 1.5-degree threshold, Gertler concluded it would be more effective for the University to work with third-party organizations that have already developed tools and metrics by which to assess the ESG practices of firms. In considering a broader advocacy and leadership role for the University, he argued that it would be most effective for Ā鶹ֱ²„app to join with other groups promoting broader disclosure of carbon use and the adoption of measures to promote a low-carbon economy. 

In particular, Ā鶹ֱ²„app would have more clout if it joined global coalitions such as the United Kingdom-based CDP, which ā€œaims to inform investor decision-making, facilitate shareholder engagement, and encourage corporations to manage their carbon emissions more effectively.ā€ Several of Canadaā€™s largest pension funds, such as the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, are already CDP signatories and Ā鶹ֱ²„app would show leadership by becoming one of the first Canadian universities to become involved with the group, he said.

John Switzer, who chairs the UTAM board of directors, agreed that Ā鶹ֱ²„app should become a CDP signatory. ā€œUTAM believes it is fitting that Canada's leading research-intensive University intends to become a signatory and we will work with the University as it becomes one of the first Canadian universities to join this organization.ā€ He said that UTAM agrees that consideration of ESG-based factors is an important component of prudent investment management. ā€œAlthough UTAM already incorporates many of these factors in its management of the Universityā€™s pension and endowment assets, we will work closely with the University to fully implement the Presidentā€™s vision.ā€

Tessa Hebb, the director of the Ottawa-based , also endorsed signing on to the CDP. ā€œWhen the CDP first started in Canada only a handful of Canadian companies responded,ā€ Hebb told Ā鶹ֱ²„app News.  ā€œOur big investors then began to ask them to respond and now these companies are taking such requests seriously.ā€

Hebb said Ā鶹ֱ²„appā€™s ESG approach would be more effective in the fight against climate change than divestment.

ā€œDivestment is not an effective strategy in the case of fossil fuel, it is a blunt instrument that doesnā€™t indicate what we want companies to do in order to achieve the 1.5 threshold,ā€ Hebb said. ā€œOur very largest institutional investors in Canada use an ESG approach ā€“ CPPIB, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Caisse de Depot ā€“ to name a few. The approach being recommended here has the potential to be far more meaningful than selling a stock that someone else will buy.ā€

Ben Caldecott, the director of the Sustainable Finance Programme at the and a member of Oxfordā€™s , also endorsed the strategy outlined by Gertler, describing it as forward-looking. The Ā鶹ֱ²„app strategy, he said, ā€œtakes account of the latest work on how environment-related risks, including climate change, could affect investment portfolios. It will allow the University of Toronto to actively engage with and adopt new investment practices and products as they become available.ā€

The Karney committee report also recommended that Ā鶹ֱ²„app increase its commitment to environmental research and teaching and to promoting sustainability in the Universityā€™s own operations. In response, Gertler pledged that Ā鶹ֱ²„app will strengthen its support for environmental research, innovation and teaching, and will continue its efforts to make University operations more sustainable. 

 

Read about Ā鶹ֱ²„appā€™s sustainability leadership 

ā€œThe Universityā€™s most valuable and effective contributions to the global effort to avert and mitigate the consequences of climate change will flow from our fundamental role as an institution of research and education,ā€ Gertler said. Among the initiatives he proposed are:

  • a tri-campus clean-tech challenge to encourage environment- and energy-related entrepreneurship;
  • $750,000 distributed over three years for climate-change related research and education initiatives;
  • prioritizing climate change-related themes in selected programs and curricula;
  • increasing the Utilities Reduction Revolving Fund by 50 per cent (from $5 million to $7.5 million) to encourage more extensive implementation of energy-saving retrofits;
  • formally adopting substantially more rigorous energy efficiency standards for capital projects;
  • pursuing opportunities to use our campuses as test beds for environmental and sustainability research and best practices;
  • investigating the potential for development of other renewable energy projects.

Gertler also said he will establish a new university-wide committee on the environment, climate change and sustainability with a mandate to coordinate and advance Ā鶹ֱ²„appā€™s environmental research, innovation, education and energy consumption initiatives.

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