Remembering Tessa Tennant, giant of green finance

By ERASMUS

LAST November investment managers and prominent figures from many faiths (including Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Taoists) gathered in the Swiss town of Zug and agreed to help each other direct the vast financial assets controlled by religious bodies towards projects that help rather than harm the earth. Out of that meeting sprang an initiative called FaithInvest. Its declared aims include the establishment of “a pipeline of investable projects in line with faith-consistent principles.”

Ethical and religiously inspired investment used in years past to focus on the avoidance of bad activities, like selling weapons to dictators or cigarettes to youngsters. The Zug meeting marks a more recent emphasis on using investment to help the environment in active ways, say through renewable energy or sustainable forest management. The deployment of billions of dollars could be affected.