Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) has released its annual environmental, social and governance report summarising its sustainable investing initiatives for its financial year ended March 31.
The report includes an analysis based on recommendations from the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), including assessments of projects funded by GPIF’s bond investments, as well as a bottom-up analysis on carbon emissions, the pension giant says in a statement on September 25.
TCFD is an industry-led organisation that provides companies and policymakers with expertise on climate disclosures.
President Miyazono Masataka points out that the pension fund has to address an increasingly diverse and extensive range of ESG factors, such as climate change, supply chain and human resources, and admits there are limits to what it can effectively address.
“For this year’s ESG report, we have expanded the scope of our analysis to measuring the impact of projects funded by ESG bonds and conducted trial analysis on natural capital, including biodiversity,” he says in the statement.
“However, these issues affect assets under management to a varying degree depending on theme. Moreover, since GPIF mainly relies on external asset managers, there are only some issues that we can address effectively,” he adds.
GPIF, the world’s largest pension fund, had 219.17 trillion yen (US$1.47 trillion) of assets as of June 2023.