Med projektet Sustainable Solutions Accelerator vil Morgan Stanley slå et slag for Sustainable Investments, dvs. investeringer i klimaforandringer, miljøforbedringer og social retfærdighed. Acceleratoren skal finde projekter, der kan bidrage til forandringer. Acceleratoren vil også give 250.000 dollar til hver fem projekter, der kan lave gennembrud.
Sustainable Solutions Accelerator
The new Morgan Stanley Sustainable Solutions Accelerator aims to address global sustainability issues, such as climate change, social justice and plastic waste, by supporting innovators of transformative solutions.
As the coronavirus pandemic takes its toll—most acutely on vulnerable communities—and social justice movements expose institutional inequalities, individuals, corporations and governments are recognizing the need for action to address the biggest threats facing our health, economy and environment.
But many would argue large-scale solutions to the world’s major sustainability challenges aren’t coming quickly enough, and that when organizations do implement solutions, they often address isolated issues, rather than the interdependencies of larger systems.
That’s why the firm is starting a new Morgan Stanley Sustainable Solutions Accelerator, which aims to help facilitate systemic change. Through an innovation award, strategic partnerships and cross-sector collaboration, the program will identify and advance wide-ranging innovation that helps address global sustainability issues, such as climate change, social justice and plastic waste.
Scaling ‘Structural Solutions’
“The challenges that have come to the forefront this year exposed just how urgently we need to address structural issues in societal and environmental design,” says James P. Gorman, Morgan Stanley CEO and Chair of the Advisory Board for the firm’s Institute for Sustainable Investing.
“The Sustainable Solutions Accelerator represents Morgan Stanley’s latest commitment to scale the solutions that drive positive, sustainable and systemic change and builds on the longstanding work of our Institute for Sustainable Investing.”
For more than a decade, Morgan Stanley has been integrating sustainability into its core businesses, spearheaded by the firm’s Global Sustainable Finance group, created in 2009. The Institute for Sustainable Investing, founded in 2013, accelerates the adoption of sustainable investing strategies across capital markets and drives environmental, social and governance initiatives at the firm.
The Morgan Stanley Sustainable Solutions Accelerator builds on this momentum, by aiming to identify large-scale solutions that require resources and partnership across private and public industries and disciplines.
In its first year, the Accelerator will grant five $250,000 Sustainable Solutions Innovation Awards to develop breakthrough concepts focused on systemic solutions for global challenges. Recipients will then participate in a year-long strategic partnership with the Institute for Sustainable Investing, tapping into the full range of the firm’s experience, networks and resources to help them achieve scale and impact.
“Whether it’s tackling climate change, social justice or plastic waste reduction, we cannot drive global, systemic change if we persist in business-as-usual thinking,” says Audrey Choi, Morgan Stanley’s Chief Sustainability Officer and CEO of the Institute for Sustainable Investing. “Now is the time to support holistic solutions that will become the next frontier in sustainable investing.”
