[All] Strategy for Divestment

[Louisette Lanteigne]

Hi everyone


I spoke with solicitor Hamish Stewart on ways to help Wilfrid Laurier investigate the possibility of divestment he provided me with excellent information that I wanted to pass along to GREN. 
On the issue of university endowment trustees and climate change-related investment risk, here is a great article with valuable links to illustrate reasons why divestment makes sense. This case is specific to the University of British Columbia but it is relevant for schools everywhere. (Mr. Stewart wrote this one for the National Observer.) 
http://www.nationalobserver.com/2016/02/11/opinion/world%E2%80%99s-largest-investors-are-assessing-climate-risk-why-not-ubcs-board-governors  
He also provided three suggestions: 
1. From a legal perspective, it would be more helpful to frame a request for divestment as a request for a more transparency around climate risk management than on purely ethical grounds. A request for the trustee board to carry out a review on strategic divestment from targeted sectors (e.g. OECD coal companies and higher-cost oil producers) would be much easier to agree to than a wholesale divestment request.  
2. Please find attached is a UBS commentary discussing targeted divestment for the Wilfred Laurier Board's reference.  It is also available online here. 
3. The attached list of Climate Risk research provides an indication of the evolution of thinking on these issues. It is not a comprehensive list, but indicates that climate change and energy transition related issues are mainstream and should be considered by responsible investors and endowment/pension trustees in particular (who have a duty to align their investment strategy with the scheme time horizon - which is in perpetuity in the case of a university endowment and at least a few decades with respect to pension funds..
I also spoke with Divest Waterloo representatives and provided them with the information and I sent a copy to the WLU board for their reference as well.  It's good stuff. 
Louisette Lanteigne



   #yiv7875828845 #yiv7875828845 -- filtered {font-family:Calibri;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}#yiv7875828845 p.yiv7875828845MsoNormal, #yiv7875828845 li.yiv7875828845MsoNormal, #yiv7875828845 div.yiv7875828845MsoNormal {margin:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:11.0pt;}#yiv7875828845 a:link, #yiv7875828845 span.yiv7875828845MsoHyperlink {color:blue;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv7875828845 a:visited, #yiv7875828845 span.yiv7875828845MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:purple;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv7875828845 span.yiv7875828845EmailStyle17 {color:windowtext;}#yiv7875828845 .yiv7875828845MsoChpDefault {}#yiv7875828845 filtered {margin:72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt;}#yiv7875828845 div.yiv7875828845WordSection1 {}#yiv7875828845 

  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gren.ca/pipermail/all_gren.ca/attachments/20160226/5fa9d93e/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: ues46988.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 200502 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://gren.ca/pipermail/all_gren.ca/attachments/20160226/5fa9d93e/attachment.pdf>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Climate risk research summary.docx
Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document
Size: 73821 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://gren.ca/pipermail/all_gren.ca/attachments/20160226/5fa9d93e/attachment.docx>