A sustainable asset investment strategy of the university belongs at the heart of the university’s climate strategy for two reasons:
- By carrying out a rooted sustainability strategy for its investment portfolio, the university can contribute to the allocation of funds to support (rather than impede) the socially just climate transition that the university deems desirable.
- By taking a pro-active stance towards what the energy and climate transition will entail in terms of rearranging the assessed values of carbon-neutral vs. carbon-intensive capital stock (industries, products, services), the value of the university’s portfolio will be more future-proof and less vulnerable to devaluation risk in the rapidly changing economy and society that climate change and climate policy induce when it is invested in sustainable financial products.
Milestones reached
A Sustainable Finance Committee – made up of UAntwerp students, researchers, expert professors and administrative and technical staff – needs to be set up, that focuses on investigating the asset investment strategy of the university and proposes a sustainability framework to guide future asset investment decisions.
Goals
The portfolio of UAntwerp is managed taking into account a clear sustainability compass. This implies a substantive exercise – establish a vision on how sustainability is interpreted and operationalised into portfolio management guidelines – as well as a procedural one – the way in which the former can be developed and maintained in an open way.
Actions
- Putting the recommendations of the Sustainable Finance Committee on the agenda of the Board of Governors;
- Adopting a standard sustainability reporting practice for the UAntwerp investment portfolio.
Indicators
- Annual standard sustainability reports on UAntwerp investment portfolio
Challenges
The Sustainable Finance Committee could not make concrete recommendations beyond the general principles, because the requested information on key indicators for the current portfolio was denied by the Movable Assets Committee (Comité Roerende Waarden). This prevented any form of zero measurement, trajectory setting and monitoring strategy.