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00:00How has this really taken on a new momentum. In 2020 we know here in Australia the bushfires have certainly driven kind of a lot more questioning with their right about the types of investments that we should be making at the moment . That's right. I think climate change has been a large and growing type of so many investors including Abbott Incentive Investments for quite a while now. But the last few months with the bushfire emergency in Australia but also other natural disasters we've seen at the same time across the board has really shifted the focus for us. So the bushfires have been unprecedented in terms of scale. I think the latest statistics I've seen show over 20 percent of Australia's forests excluding those in Tasmania burnt during the season which is against a background rate of about 4.5 percent globally on any continent any bushfire season in the last 20 years. So the scale is unprecedented. We've also seen the impact broadly on people of Australia. So almost 80 percent of people in Australia have been impacted directly or indirectly by the bushfires this year . So when you look at the scale of things you can see why we're starting to see a little bit more or a lot more pressure on policymakers investors and companies to show that we're doing our part. I'm trying to look at reducing and mitigating the impacts and we're certainly starting to see that play out now . And I think that will be a continuing theme throughout the next year and further into the future . Daniel what kind of questions do you ask when you're looking to make investments within the ESG space. Because there is a preconception or misconception I should say that being ESG focus means that this comes at the expense of performance . It's absolutely not the case. And I think there's a lot of research now that shows that you do not have to go up for tens when you're integrating ESG. And we wouldn't be doing this if we didn't think it meant better investment decisions and ultimately better value . So for us it's about understanding more broadly the business strategies of the companies we invest in and also the different impacts that they're facing through various different ESG aspects. Climate change is clearly one of those . So it might not have been factored into the company's business strategies and processes in the past. But if a company today is not looking at the physical impacts of climate change and also the potential policy implications of climate change policy on their business strategies then you know that more broadly reflects that they may not be doing as well as they should be in other business strategies that they're undertaking .

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ESG Investing: Why Climate Change Is an Important Consideration

Danielle Welsh-Rose, ESG director for Asia-Pacific at Aberdeen Standard Investment, discusses her ESG strategy including her investments around climate change. She speaks on “Bloomberg Markets: Asia.” (Source: Bloomberg)

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