Assessing Corporate SDG Alignment: Identifying Gaps and Opportunities
Research Paper
December 6, 2023
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In 2015, the United Nations launched its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to drive large-scale, positive environmental and societal impact. The SDG framework partly aims to drive capital investment toward a sustainable future through channels such as impact investing. Company alignment to the SDGs may be an important signal to investors for several reasons. Apart from considerations of risk mitigation and a focus on long-term resilience, we found that SDG-aligned companies also represent new market opportunities and competitive advantages. Investors with impact mandates may also have easier access to capital.
In this report, we map the SDGs to four broad themes — environment, society, economy and governance — and use the MSCI SDG Alignment dataset to analyze alignment patterns for constituents of the MSCI ACWI Investable Market Index (IMI). We also explore company, sectoral and regional alignment patterns to provide actionable insights for impact investors.
SDG alignment by theme for companies in the MSCI ACWI IMI
Data as of Sept. 26, 2023. Source: MSCI ESG Research
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