Sustainable Finance II: System-level Inv

The social and environmental challenges of the 21st century are new, different, and fundamentally destabilizing. Many of these challenges are systemic in nature; they are complex, interconnected global issues with multiple contributing factors. They impact entire societies and economies and threaten the global financial system, corporate value, and long-term investment returns across all asset classes. To finance a more sustainable world, investing needs to take into account the interplay and interdependencies between investment and the most complex challenges facing our world. System-level investing sets out to do just that.

Building on and going well beyond sustainable investing practices, system-level investing recognizes both the potential of investments to impact social, financial, and environmental systems and the complexity of the times we live in. Indeed, system-level investors intentionally set out to manage their impacts on the global systems and adopt investment strategies that seek to minimize systemic risks, such as racial and gender injustice, income inequality, food and health systems fragility and climate change, as well as promote opportunities for system-wide rewards.

In this course, students will learn the fundamentals of system-level investing, including: what it means to manage system-level risks and rewards, why it is imperative to do so now, and how to integrate this new way of thinking into current investing practice.