As this week marks five years since the launch of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), how have Australian sustainability funds performed over that period?
The UN SDGs are 17 goals which were adopted by United Nations member states in a 2015 as a call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure people reach peace and prosperity by 2030. Areas include zero hunger, climate action, gender equality and clean water & sanitation.
Josh Kendall, head of responsible investment at Insight Investment, said: “The SDGs have achieved something other collective global targets have not: a shared sense of purpose and clarity of direction. The goals attract universal support because of their broad focus and the awareness directed towards our common human challenges.
“COVID-19 threatens recent progress in reducing poverty around the world. This highlights how much we need the goals and why we must continue to prioritise them; we risk creating further problems ahead if sustainability is not prioritised.”
According to FE Analytics, within the Australian Core Strategies universe, there were seven sustainable Australian equity funds and two Australian bond ones.
Five of the equity funds had a five-year track record and the best performer was Alphinity Sustainable Share which had achieved returns of 65% followed by AMP Capital Sustainable Share which had seen annualised returns of 50%. The Altius Sustainable Bond fund, which was launched in October 2014, had seen annualised returns of 13.1%.
Looking over one year, the best-performing equity fund was Ausbil Active Sustainable Equity which had returned 7% followed by the AMP fund which saw returns of 2.4%. This compared to losses of 2.3% by the Australian equity sector.
On the bond side, Altius Sustainable Bond had returned 0.25% and the Pendal Sustainable Australian Fixed Interest fund had returned 2.5%. over one year to 31 August versus returns by the Australian Bond sector of 1.49%.
