Items Tagged With Socially Responsible Investing

A product of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, Amy Domini grew up with the flower-child ethos of goodwill. Personal ethics were important to her as a stockbroker, prompting her to write "Ethical Investing" in 1984, where she questioned why people would invest in corporations that undermined their individual goals. She soon began to see her investment style as part of a larger movement and herself as a leader within that movement, providing the disjointed socially responsible investing community with a sense of structure and solidarity. Together with her partners Peter Kinder and Steve Lydenberg , she formed the Domini 400 Social Index , comprised of 400 U.S. corporations selected for a range of social and environmental criteria, and the Domini Social Equity Fund , which tracks this index.

"When I started Domini Social Investments, I had no idea of how difficult it would be to operate in the mutual fund industry," Domini says, "This industry is highly regulated and our shareholders deserve nothing less than excellent service." The industry was also largely untapped and the future of socially responsible investing met with skepticism. "I am largely glad that I did not know then what I know now since I might have been afraid to try, and that would have been a terrible mistake."

We launched a major new campaign taking on giant Agricultural companies ADM, Bunge, and Cargill for violating human rights and clearing rainforests to make way for massive soy and palm plantations. Clearing tropical rainforests for plantations, what we call agri-sprawl, generates more than 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. This is the reason why Indonesia is the world’s third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, and Brazil is #4.

These agricultural companies trade at higher valuations (earnings multiples) but benefit from the same high prices of energy and global commodiites that are driving up the price of energy.  Higher commodity prices and demand mean more land is being put to work.  Since a dense rainforest holds more hydrocarbons (burnable substances), burning down the rainforest to build a farm relseases CO2.