The good investment – a view through “sustainability glasses”

According to Wiktionary, an investment is the “placement of capital in expectation of deriving income or profit from its use or appreciation”. Under the term “sustainability”, we find the definition of a “principle which is not consuming more ressources than being renewable, regenerated and re-deployed in the future.” So what do you do if you want to use the two concepts combined, if you want to “invest sustainably”?

Common solutions

An investment in “environmentally friendly, sustainable” stocks or similar financial products may at first sight be “sustainable”. But some questions arise. For example: Who controls what and how? How much investment is useful? How fast do the profits have to be realized? What if stocks are developing negatively?

Another type of ecologically sustainable investment is donation. In environmental, natural or research institutions, which often provide an “environmental label” as a “payback”, they hardly yield any profit.

There are also investors who want to generate a social added value with their money. For example, with the support of local associations, churches or other social organizations. Payback is also an immaterial one here – “doing good things and talking about it” can at least improve the image.

New goals of the UNO

The UN has now defined its own goals for sustainable interaction with each other and with the environment. These are the so-called Sustainable Development Goals. Approximately 3 trillion USD would be needed to achieve these goals, which should secure our co-existence on our planet. At the moment, however, “only” about 500 billion USD are spent on development. So it requires sustainable investments.

NEXUS is taking the lead

We want to support these goals, but we also want that these – Yours! – sustainable investments make profit or at least be cost-effective. Three factors are decisive from our perspective:

1. The financial industry must find ways and tools to finance projects with higher risks or smaller margins.
2. The environmental and social organisations must get used to entrepreneurial thinking.
3. The projects themselves must adapt to the new circumstances. The needs of investors need to be considered as well as the concerns of the environment and the social communities.

All this requires flexibility and capacity to deal with complex situations. It takes the will of all parties to collaborate.

With the NEXUS Concept, we have implemented exactly this networked idea and we want to expand it further. We are now working hard to ensure that YOU will soon be able to make a good investment in our project.

Source: nexus ch