In conversation with Fiona Reynolds and Eric Usher on Climate Change and Human Rights
The Global Compact Network Australia (GCNA) is hosting a dinner with Fiona Reynolds, CEO of Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and Eric Usher, Head UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) to address the ‘Intersection of Climate Change and Human Rights – Key Considerations for Business’.
Climate change will have devastating consequences for people in poverty. Even under the best-case scenario, hundreds of millions will face food insecurity, forced migration, disease, and death. Climate change threatens the future of human rights and risks undoing the last fifty years of progress in development, global health, and poverty reduction.
We know that staying the course is not an option, disastrous for our global economy and will pull millions of people into poverty. Addressing climate change will require fundamental shifts in our global economy, a decoupling of growth from fossil fuel emissions and an investor community that supports innovative pathways to a decarbonised economy. These shifts cannot take place at the expense of our workers but must provide decent work for all and work across all impacted stakeholder groups to deliver more equitable outcomes and ensure that no one is left behind.
To address this increasingly relevant topic, this event is an incredible opportunity to hear from eminent experts on responsible and sustainable business practices, Fiona Reynolds and Eric Usher.
Fiona is a globally recognised leader in sustainability, responsible investment, and public policy. She was recently recognised by Barron’s magazine as one of the top 20 most influential people in sustainability globally, and by the Australian Financial Review (AFR) as one of Australia’s one hundred women of influence for her work in responsible investment globally.
As Head of the UNEP FI, Eric has focussed on accelerating the deep integration of sustainability risks into financial practice, including addressing climate change, natural capital loss and human rights abuses. His work is key to contributing to frameworks through which the finance industry can contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Drawing on their extensive experiences from across sectors and their numerous positions of leadership globally, Fiona and Eric will unpack how business efforts to address climate change intersect with human rights issues and why these two areas of work cannot continue to operate in silo.
Specifically, this dinner will be an opportunity to explore the following key areas:
- The ‘E’ and ‘S’ in Environment Social Governance (ESG): climate and human rights concerns for investors, including initiatives such as the Asset Owner Net Zero Alliance;
- Investments for a Just Transition;
- Human rights dimensions of climate change, including, for example the responsibility of business to address modern slavery and the exacerbation of this issue by climate change.
For more information, please contact secretariat@unglobalcompact.org.au.
