EMIA Notes - November 21, 2022

How can investors measure social and economic rights and find best practices without falling into the trap of income bias when engaging sovereign issuers?

The Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI) produces an annual income-adjusted Quality of Life index with detailed information about economic and social rights per country. They have also recently collaborated with the World Bank on research to explore a use-case of HRMI’s economic and social rights dataset. i.e. using the data to tilt the JPM Emerging Market Bond Index.

An analysis by the World Bank shows an 85% correlation between the S pillar of most currently available sovereign ESG scores and a country’s national income. According to a JPM survey, this income bias is the most dominant primary concern about sovereign ESG investing.

EMIA will host a webinar to help investors understand and use the income-adjusted index. It can serve as a basis for engaging sovereign issuers at an adequate level when it comes to social and economic rights.

Speakers:

Anne-Marie Brook: Co-founder of the Human Rights Measurement Initiative, a collaborative venture between human rights practitioners, researchers, and academics that produces a database of metrics about human rights performance around the world

Dr Susan Randolph: Co-founder of the Human Rights Measurement Initiative

Bryan Gurhy: Senior Financial Sector Specialist at the World Bank

Uwe Schillhorn: Director of the Sovereign Social Program, EMIA (moderator)

The webinar is open to emerging markets financial professionals only.

Net zero targets are steadily becoming a norm for companies and countries in developed markets, and this trend is spreading into emerging ones. Yet, investors will be wise to ask: What is behind these lofty claims? Can we rely on them? Are there achievable plans behind the targets? What are the criteria investors should use to assess them and separate genuine progress from greenwashing?

We have invited John Lang from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit to speak about these and other questions. He runs the Net Zero Tracker on behalf of four international organizations including Oxford Net Zero. The Net Zero Tracker is a global resource for collating, assessing and presenting the scale and quality of net zero pledges across nationals, regions, cities and publicly listed companies. John specializes in visually explaining climate science and policy to the public. Earlier this year he explained two of the latest IPCC reports: the science of climate change and how we stop it.

At the webinar, John will introduce the tools the Net Zero Tracker offers to investors, review the situation with net zero targets in developing countries and companies, and talk about the indicators of quality in assessing these targets by investors.

The event will be moderated by Pavel Laberko, Director of the Extractive Industries Program, EMIA.

The webinar is open to financial professionals, issuers, and EMIA partners only.

Investors need to understand the critical ESG information in the ICT industry to accurately manage risk and support best practice adoption. 

Udit Gupta, PhD, incoming Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell Tech of Cornell University will share how investors can:

Udit Gupta’s research lies at the intersection of sustainable computing, computer architecture, and systems for machine learning. His research focuses on discovering and demonstrating new ways to design systems and hardware to improve the performance, efficiency, and environmental sustainability of next-generation computing platforms and emerging applications. 

During his PhD in computer science at Harvard University, he was also a Visiting Research Scientist at Meta AI. His work has been evaluated at scale in industry use cases, open-sourced, and featured in news articles published by Bloomberg and CNBC. He received the IEEE MICRO Top Picks Award (2022) and Honorable Mention (2021). 

Speakers:

Udit Gupta, PhD, incoming Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell Tech of Cornell University

Sherin Gobran, Director of the TMT Program, EMIA (moderator) 

The webinar is open to financial professionals, issuers, and EMIA partners only.

Where can investors get reliable and up-to-date information about methane emissions?

Methane emissions make a significant contribution to global warming and all its negative consequences. Many oil & gas companies emitting this potent greenhouse gas are located in developing countries. For investors looking at these countries, it is important to have relevant data to compare emissions by these companies, as well as aggregated by countries where they are located. This data can help in the investment decision making process, as well as in concentrating advocacy and engagement efforts on the largest emitters.

Following a series of events on methane emissions organized by the Extractive Industries Program, our next webinar will focus on the data and tools available for emerging markets investors. 

During their presentation and a Q&A session, experts from Carbon Tracker will describe the tools that they have developed and the data they use. They will work through several EM country and company examples and use a case study to show how to analyze an oil & gas enterprise from the point of view of its methane emissions, weak points, and potential engagement targets.

Speakers:

Rob Schuwerk, Executive Director, Carbon Tracker North America

Pavel Laberko, Director of the Extractive Industries Program, EMIA (moderator)

The webinar is open to financial professionals, issuers, and EMIA partners only.

We welcome Moody's Investment Services as our first Affiliate Member.

Affiliate Members are key organizations in the Emerging Markets Investment Ecosystem. They are leaders in sustainability in emerging markets and work with investors and issuers to support best practices.

We look forward to working with Moody's to help emerging market investors and issuers make better decisions that support good governance and sustainable development. 

For more information on becoming an Affiliate member, please contact Claire Meier Underhill at cmeier@eminvestorsalliance.org.

In this report we look at the role of the power utilities sector in carbon transition, the relevant opportunities and challenges, review the situation in emerging markets, and highlight the critical issues that investors ought to pay attention to.

Electricity generation is currently a significant contributor to GHG emissions. It is also a key enabler and driver of carbon transition. As the economy is moving toward electrification (increasing use of electric vehicles, heat pumps, and other forms of substitution of fossil fuels by electricity as the source of energy), it is becoming imperative to make sure the power utilities sector is rapidly switching to renewables, and away from coal, gas, and oil. 

The importance of this transition is reinforced by growing demand for energy in developing countries. Populations in many countries, especially in Africa, still lack basic access to electricity. As these countries develop their infrastructure, and as people in emerging markets enjoy growing disposable incomes and begin to use more electricity-powered goods and services, demand for this source of energy is bound to keep growing for decades to come.

The report was written by Sharon Lui and Pavel Laberko, CFA. 

It is available to EMIA members at this link.

The Emerging Markets Investors Alliance seeks relationship managers with at least 10 years of experience in emerging market sales (debt or equity) or relationship management to engage asset managers in our initiatives.

Successful candidates will have a commitment to advancing responsible investing/ESG and a strong client book in their region(s) of focus. The position is remote and candidates may be based anywhere.

Interested candidates should send an email including their resume and/or LinkedIn profile mentioning “Relationship Manager - Asset Management” in the subject line to applicants@eminvestorsalliance.org.

The Emerging Markets Investors Alliance seeks relationship managers with at least 10 years of experience in emerging markets finance to engage stock exchanges in our initiatives.

The ideal candidate will have a commitment to advancing responsible investing/ESG, and a strong understanding of emerging and frontier equity markets, and relationships with stock exchanges. The position is remote and candidates may be based anywhere.

Interested candidates should send an email including their resume and/or LinkedIn profile mentioning “Relationship Manager - Stock Exchanges” in the subject line to applicants@eminvestorsalliance.org. 

The Emerging Markets Investors Alliance seeks volunteers to serve in a range of roles. We welcome interest from those with a range of skilled backgrounds including research and writing, editing, survey design, graphic design, and Drupal web development.

Interested candidates should send an email including your resume and/or Linkedin profile mentioning “Volunteer Opportunities” in the subject to applicants@eminvestorsalliance.org.

The Emerging Markets Investors Alliance (EMIA) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose mission is to enable institutional investors to use the power of their collective capital and voices to advocate for a more sustainable future. EMIA "Programs" are activities that bring together investors, policy experts, and governments or companies for the purpose of improving ESG best practice adoption. EMIA Programs focus on sovereigns (e.g., Government Debt and Fiscal Governance Program, Sovereign Decarbonization) and on sectors (e.g., Agricultural Program, Extractive Industries, Financials Program and Telecom, Media, and Technology Program).