Minerva supports the UN Global Compact SDG Flag Campaign

September 25th, 2024

For the second consecutive year, Minerva proudly raises the SDG flag as part of a global campaign, reaffirming our support for the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and our commitment to a more sustainable future for all.

We are dedicated to driving meaningful action to address the most urgent challenges of our time, including climate change, gender inequality, poverty, and ensuring decent work for everyone. Together with the global community, we embrace our shared responsibility to create lasting, positive change and build a world where no one is left behind.

As a stewardship and proxy voting service provider, we offer solutions that empower investors to address the issues most important to them in relation to the SDGs. We accomplish this by developing a framework that enables investors align their portfolios with specific SDGs.

To support this, we have developed a customisable framework tailored to our clients’ focus on a particular industry or specific SGDs.

For instance, we recently conducted comprehensive research that considers the analysis of companies with final year end 2023 and 2024 from the Solactive GBS Developed Markets Large & Mid Cap and Solactive GBS South Africa Large & Mid Cap USD Index PR.

Our methodology assesses companies’ disclosure and performance in relation to their sustainability efforts. By correlating our methodology with SDG targets, we can evaluate the extent to which a company is contributing positively toward achieving each specific SDG goal.

The data revealed that most companies from the African region included in the analysed index tend to have better overall disclosure when compared to other regions with a larger number of companies. Companies in North America have disclosed worst overall. Affordable/ Clean Energy SDG7 is where all regions have performed better, whereas more needs to be done in regard to disclosure on Life on Land SDG 15.

We analysed our data based on ICB sector as it considers materiality. Below is a list of the sectors with the highest and lowest scores:

Highest scoring ICB Sector: Tobacco
Lowest scoring ICB Sector: Software & Computer Services
Highest scoring SDG: SDG7: Affordable/ Clean Energy
Lowest scoring SDG: SDG15: Life on Land

Meanwhile among the Non-life Insurance & Banks analysed, there is a tendency to score lower in SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG 14 (Life Below Water) and SDG 15 (Life On Land). While they may not have a mandatory reporting requirement for these areas and thus may omit this information from their sustainability disclosures, they do have the option to report on these aspects or explain why they consider it unnecessary to do so.

Ultimately smaller companies may not have the resources to focus on sustainability reporting, but this does not necessarily reveal that they are more harmful to the environment than a bigger company who does disclosure around these topics.

While the heat map does show performance differences, they may also reflect the relevance and regulation of sustainability issues for each ICB Sector.

Our research shows that sectors with stricter regulations, Gas, Water & Multi-utilities, Energy, or Industrial Materials, tended to have better disclosure regarding Environmental Impact and other Environmental KPIs, for example for UK companies.