Human society is on the cusp of a great change because of the climate crisis and faith groups can lead the way to a sustainable future, a London conference that brought together around 40 representatives of Christian groups to focus on Church investments in climate solutions was told.
Cafod, the Society of the Holy Child Jesus and Columban Missionaries were among the Catholic groups taking part.
FaithInvest chief executive Dr Lorna Gold, who also chairs the Laudato Si’ Movement, called for moral leadership from faith groups. “In all our investment decisions, there’s a moral risk, there’s an economic risk and there’s an environmental risk,” she said. She told of shareholder action by faith groups and investment in renewable energy that have diverted funding from fossil fuel investments.
To support faith groups to feel better equipped and more confident about implementing faith-consistent investing, FaithInvest has developed a four-week, online, live-taught course: Faithful Finance: An Introduction to Aligning Investments with Faith Values, to be launched in Spring 2024. It also invites faith organisations to submit their investment policies in confidence to be scored using FaithInvest’s proprietary framework to assess the extent to which their policies are aligned with their values.
The conference, co-hosted by FaithInvest and Operation Noah, heard how faith groups are currently taking action on climate change through their investments such as divesting from fossil fuels and investing in sustainable energy.
Paul Jaffe, head of ESG: Real Assets for the Church Commissioners, said in the 18 months he had been at the Church Commissioners, which manages a £10.3bn investment fund, he had been struck by the extent to which “every decision is in relation to the environment, climate change, and asking ‘are we doing enough?’” He said, “I also see this in other faith organisations that either are part of the Anglican Church or wider, and that recognition that doing good on a day-to-day basis should be backed up by how our investments work.”
However, in a 2023 FaithInvest study, shared by FaithInvest Director of Programmes Mathew Jensen, which looked at 87 publicly available investment policy and guidelines statements from religious groups, just 55 per cent explicitly stated that they took their faith values into account when making investment decisions. Of these, 36 per cent were involved in impact investing, where the intention is to generation positive social and environmental benefits alongside a financial return. “In contrast, only 5 per cent of the group that did not link their faith values to their investment policy were involved in impact investing,” he said.
One challenge facing smaller faith-based organisations is they often lack capacity. Mike Sturgess, chair of the Anglican Diocese of Truro diocesan board of finance, reported that around 10 per cent of its investment fund is in renewables and it has a significant property portfolio, but its investment committee is made up of only six volunteers who meet quarterly. Nevertheless, “we have incorporated Kingdom values into our investment policy… first, do no harm and then do some good.” It has already divested from fossil fuels.
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