Sustainability consultancy firm fors.earth capital GmbH ensures we have the necessary expertise in ESG matters during the investment process and in active ownership. We ask the firm’s Managing Director, Matthias Bönning, who is an active member of our team, three questions…
What do you find motivating about working with E3?
Matthias Bönning: Sustainability is not only a matter for the great political stage. Above all, we need to integrate it into our everyday behaviour – that goes for both individuals and companies. It’s our everyday behaviour that will decide what impact we have as a society and how successfully we can tackle challenges.
With this in mind, I highly appreciate E3’s clear commitment and consistent action towards pursuing sustainable values and ambitious targets – for SMEs in particular, individual, focused measures can go a long way. Being part of such an approach is a source of great enrichment for me.
With this in mind, I highly appreciate E3’s clear commitment and consistent action towards pursuing sustainable values and ambitious targets.
Is there an ESG initiative that you find inspiring?
Matthias Bönning: All around the world, there are numerous initiatives and people who are taking action to preserve our natural environment or fight for social justice and coming under attack or even risking their lives in the process. I have the highest respect for these selfless individuals working in the interests of the community.
Especially nowadays, such action goes hand in hand with actively advocating for our democracy, which is beginning to crumble in many countries. We need to be clear that right-wing populist and nationalist parties or totalitarian systems work directly counter to sustainable development in the vast majority of cases: in the form of abuses of human rights, dismantling of social protections and failure to tackle environmental challenges such as climate change.
What does “sustainable investing” mean to you?
Matthias Bönning: In principle the term is misleading because people rarely make truly sustainable choices – and investments are no exception. Beyond the term, for me it’s about investments that promote sustainable development and transitions instead of blocking them and that ensure that we as a planet are consuming the resources of ONE planet, and not 1.7 planets, as is the case currently. What’s more, in the long term, sustainable investments are the ones that will be the most successful financially speaking.
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