The CFA Institute recently commissioned market research into how investment professionals in different countries/regions consider ESG risks. The full study can be seen at: https://blogs.cfainstitute.org/marketintegrity/2015/08/17/cfa-institute-survey-how-do-esg-issues-factor-into-investment-decisions/
The country level data shows remarkable variation, Canadian respondents, for example, coming on par with Indian respondents in terms of awareness of climate risk. Interestingly, awareness of environmental issues is not low amongst Canadian investment professionals suggesting that there is a particular challenge over climate.
For abbreviations see: http://webstore.lexi.com/s.nl/ctype.KB/it.I/id.378/KB.3234/.f
Please rate the following ESG issues in terms of importance to your investment analysis/decisions on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is not important at all and 5 is very important.
Table showing the % selecting 4 or 5 (top 2 box importance)
| REGION | Market (Top 8) | |||||||||||
| TOTAL | AMER | APAC | EMEA | AU | CA | DE | IN | ZA | CH | UK | US | |
| Climate Change | 40% | 37% | 40% | 49% | 44% | 33% | 64% | 29% | 50% | 54% | 53% | 39% |
| Environmental Degradation | 54% | 52% | 63% | 57% | 67% | 52% | 56% | 59% | 67% | 62% | 55% | 51% |