Simon Mundy, editor of The Financial Times' Moral Money, has written a book, and a cartography, to help navigate the world of ESG. In conversation with Brunswick Group he delves into the key ESG issues encompassed in "Race for Tomorrow: Survival, Innovation and Profit on the front lines of the Climate Crisis."
Race for Tomorrow is the result of a two-year project that took Mundy across six continents and 26 countries investigating what he describes as “the single biggest story of the century: humanity's race to respond to climate change”.
Mundy took an “old-fashioned reporting approach” to the project. He got on the road to “wear out my shoes” talking to the people directly impacted by climate change, all from very diverse backgrounds.
“It was an incredible learning experience for me. It's awakened me to the incredible urgency of the problems that we face but also the power of the solutions that are being developed,” he says.
Now in his role as Moral Money, he keeps digging into the business and financial angles of the issue. Every chapter of the book tackles a country or group of countries which can be matched with the main ESG themes the industry is facing.
In that sense, Mundy’s book provides valuable insights for ESG professionals, corporate sustainability practitioners, and investors interested in integrating ESG factors into their strategies. The stories that Mundy has documented, portraying the human face of the climate crisis, are the sort of qualitative data that these professionals are not going to find elsewhere.
Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity. To listen to the full interview, click here.