In the United States, sustainable investing continues to grow at a healthy pace. In 2018, there has been an increase in the total US-domiciled assets under management using sustainable investing strategies from $12.0 trillion at the start of 2018 to $17.1 trillion at the start of 2020, an increase of 42 percent. It consists of 33 percent, or one in three dollars, of the $51.4 trillion in total US assets under professional management.
Through surveying and research undertaken in 2020, the US SIF Foundation has identified the following:
- $16.6 trillion in US-domiciled assets at the beginning of 2020 held by 530 institutional investors, 384 money managers and 1,204 community investment institutions that practice “ESG incorporation”—applying various environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria in their investment analysis and portfolio selection.
- $2.0 trillion in US-domiciled assets at the beginning of 2020 held by 205 institutional investors or money managers that filed or co-filed shareholder resolutions relating to ESG issues at publicly traded companies from 2018 through 2020.
The US SIF Foundation has also conducted research on 530 institutional asset owners with $6.2 trillion in ESG assets, corresponding to 51 percent of the $12.01 trillion that money managers identified as institutional assets.
The purpose of this paper, The Value of Everything, is to begin the process of clarifying global asset value especially as may be affected by the sustainability (or lack thereof) of financial systems, and not just that which is represented by institutional assets under management.