Sustainability Leaders

Investors and other stakeholders are demanding tools to better measure the sustainability and performance of the mining industry. On this episode, guest host Dan Barclay, CEO, BMO Capital Markets is joined by Tom Butler, CEO, International Council on Mining & Metals (ICMM), in a discussion about how the industry is increasing transparency to make it easier for investors and other stakeholders to quantify ESG efforts and results.

For full transcript and links, go to http://www.bmosustainabilityleaders.com/.

The COVID-19 crisis is putting more of a spotlight on sustainable finance. It’s time for banks, investors,

venture capitalists and others to think carefully about the kinds of products that can be created and the

types of investments that can be made to help society recover from this pandemic. On this episode of

Sustainability Leaders, host Michael Torrance moderates a round table discussion with BMO

sustainability experts Manju Seal, David Snyed and Jonathan Hackett to discuss the role that sustainable

finance can play in our current environment.

Biodiversity is the natural variety of species and ecosystem services that we – and our economies – all depend on. But leading international researchers are concluding that biodiversity is being lost at a rate that is unprecedented in human history. Our first guest is Professor Kai Chan, from the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia. Kai is one of the coordinating lead authors of the IPBES Global Assessment Report and shares some of its key conclusions, and what the implications are for businesses – both in terms of their impacts on biodiversity, and their dependence on it. 

Later, we’ll hear from Katie Leach from the UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Center and Chris Hart from Global Canopy. Katie and Chris discuss their collaboration on ENCORE, a tool which helps businesses and financial institutions understand their own dependencies on nature and how to look at natural capital risks. 

For full transcript and links, go to http://www.bmosustainabilityleaders.com/.

China’s enormous growth and development in the last 25 years have presented significant challenges to environmental sustainability. Sustainable finance and the green bond market has emerged as a key pillar of China’s green strategy. There is an estimated $1 trillion annually needed to meet China’s environmental goals and government investment only covers about 15% of that amount. Private sector initiatives will be key to China’s environmental strategy and is driving innovation.    

On this episode we’re joined by Deborah Lehr, Vice Chairman and Executive Director of the Paulson Institute. Deborah advises Hank Paulson, Chairman of the Paulson Institute, on US-China relations and manages the institute’s green finance center. We are also joined by Dan Krieter, who you may remember from our first episode. Dan is a Director in the BMO Capital Markets Fixed Income Strategy Group. He has a special interest and focus on sustainable, fixed income investments and leads the group’s research in the green bonds space. 

For full show notes and links mentioned in this episode, visit http://www.bmosustainabilityleaders.com.

Today, we bring you a special episode as part of our partnership with Bloomberg for Sustainable Finance Week - a collection of events around this topic in New York City and Toronto, happening the first week of December. Our guest is Lee Ballin, the Head of Business Development for Sustainability at BloombergNEF - Bloomberg’s primary research group focused on industry-transforming trends and technologies driving a cleaner, more competitive future.  

Lee and Michael Torrance discuss the collaboration between Bloomberg and partners coming together for Sustainable Finance Week, why mainstreaming of sustainable finance will be at the heart of discussions, and where the future of sustainable finance is going. 

For full show notes and links mentioned in this episode, visit http://www.bmosustainabilityleaders.com.

Today we’re going to take an inside look at responsible investment, with our friends at BMO Global Asset Management in the UK. Our first guest is Sustainability Leaders host, David Sneyd, Vice President, Analyst, Responsible Investment at BMO GAM. David talks about how a responsible investment team works, and how they engage with their investments.  Later in the episode, David will host a conversation with James Coldwell from ShareAction, an NGO in the UK that collaborates with David’s team on a number of ESG issues including the Workforce Disclosure Initiative (WDI) which promotes better labour standards through investment engagement.

For full show notes and links mentioned in this episode, visit http://bmo.com/sustainabilityleaders

Today, our guest is Dr. Bob Litterman. An economist, Bob is considered one of the leading authorities on risk management and quantitative trading on Wall Street. He has been studying climate change for a decade, and today he shares not only his insights from managing firm-wide risk but how it applies to climate risk. As a board member of Climate Leadership Council, he breaks down the Baker-Shultz Carbon Dividend Plan, which is now supported by over 3,500 economists, and explains why pricing carbon is imperative for informed decision-making.

For full show notes and links mentioned in this episode, visit http://bmo.com/sustainabilityleaders

One of the world’s largest supranational issuers, with 189 member countries, the World Bank has “established ambitious, but achievable goals to galvanize international and national efforts to end extreme poverty globally within a generation and to promote shared prosperity.”   Our guest is Heike Reichelt, the Head of Investor Relations and New Products at the World Bank. We’ll learn about the World Bank’s funding programs, their influential work in sustainable development and how they mobilize capital markets to reduce social inequality and support UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

For full show notes and links mentioned in this episode, visit http://bmo.com/sustainabilityleaders

The field of Responsible Investing is growing at a rapid pace, and to explore all of its implications we turned to two experts. They’ll give us an overview as well as dive into some of the interesting trends and best practices from Responsible Investing in Canada.

We’ll talk with Alison Schneider, the Director of Responsible Investing for AIMCO, or Alberta Investment Management Company. AIMCO is a Crown-Corporation that is responsible for the investments of 31 pension, endowment and government funds in Alberta. We’re also joined by Dustyn Lanz, CEO of the Responsible Investment Association in Canada.

For full show notes and links mentioned in this episode, visit http://bmo.com/sustainabilityleaders

In this episode, Manju Seal sits down with atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe. Katharine is a well-known TED speaker, one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2014, and a respected scientist studying global warming today. Originally from Canada, she is now a professor and the director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. 

In a wide-ranging interview, they discussed a “just transition” to a low carbon economy, why we need to talk about climate change, and the opportunities for global economies as the climate changes. 

For full show notes and links mentioned in this episode, visit http://bmo.com/sustainabilityleaders