Nordea Asset Management has taken home the ‘ESG engagement initiative of the year’ prize in the 2020 Sustainable Investment Awards for our engagement with the pharmaceutical industry.
The awards are hosted by the Environmental Finance magazine and Nordea is recognised for its efforts in moving the industry towards less pollutive production methods.
“Engagement with the companies and industries, where we are invested, is a backbone of our Responsible Investment strategy. In that perspective we are very proud of being recognised, receiving the ‘ESG Engagement initiative’ award."
"We have had a very constructive and productive dialogue with the pharma companies and Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Initiative (PSCI) on responsible manufacturing and pharmaceutical pollution in India and that we will continue to work with the industry," says Magdalena Kettis from NAM's Active Ownership team.
“Engagements like this address both sides of what is sometimes called the ‘double materiality’. At one and the same time, we have succeeded in reducing a material risk that the industry posed to the environment locally and the risk that companies are exposed to by not having proper control of the sustainability aspects of their operations – which is material from an investor profitability point of view,” explains Eric Pedersen, head of Responsible Investments in NAM.
Our engagement with the pharma industry goes back several years. In 2015, Nordea Asset Management (NAM) started a dialogue with the pharma industry about the environmental and health impact of pharma manufacturing in India, directly with the companies we were investing in and through PSCI. NAM visited Hyderabad in India where fierce industrial pollution surrounded several manufacturing sites.
In 2016 Nordea then commissioned an on-the-ground investigation on pharmaceutical manufacturing in Hyderabad and published a report on the results that we also shared with the industry.
Two years after we commissioned a follow-up investigation. Evidence confirmed that pharmaceutical pollution was still rife and not being effectively addressed.