Jiva Healing

For many years I have worked in the area of socially responsible or ethical investment. Once the domain of hard line environmentalists, this type of investment focused on avoiding companies that were doing bad things – destroying the environment, mistreating employees or communities, or adopting unethical and corrupt business practices. But increasingly, as enviromental and social issues have moved into the mainstream business consciousness it has become apparent that there are now a number of positive investment opportunities, into companies doing good things, that are allowing a new breed of responsible investors to allocate their captial in ways that both make money and do not cause harm at the same time.

But how does one distiguish between the investment funds that offer genuinely sustainable returns and ones that purport to be green, but really don’t do what they say on the tin? Well these are the investment funds that I would recommend for your pensions and ISAs

Impax Environmental Markets – this is a great fund with a small/medium company bias – investing in companies at the forefront of developing environmental technologies to address some of the world’s most pressing environmental problems. It invests in companies in the alternative energy, energy efficiency, water treatment and pollution control and waste management sectors and has a great track record of delivering good financial returns.

Norwich Union Sustainable Future Funds – I must admit I used to work here so I might be a little compromised, but I know their investment process well and they do invest in companies that are doing things in the environmental sector as well as companies with good social practices and products (e.g. education, healthcare, urban regeneration) – they also engage with companies to encourage them to improve their social and environmental practices.

And finally, Friends Provident’s Stewardship fund – this has been around for years, has had great financial performance and a large team of committed analysts and fund managers that look at social and enviromental issues across all the companies that go into their funds.