Business and financial markets information service provider Bloomberg announced the launch of the Bloomberg U.S. Municipal Impact Index, aiming to track the market of U.S. Green, Social, and Sustainability-categorized municipal bonds.According to Bloomberg, the new index is the first standardized measure of the U.S. municipal tax-exempt investment grade impact bond market.

Climate research provider and environmental disclosure platform CDP and the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF) announced today a new collaboration, aimed at enhancing financial institutions’ capacity to measure and disclose their financed emissions.According to CDP, financing activities represent by far the greatest aspect of financial institutions’ climate impact, with finance emissions approximately 700 greater than operational emissions. A significant data gap exists in this area, with only a quarter of financial institutions that disclose to CDP reporting on their financed emissions.

Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), UBS Optimus Foundation, Credit Suisse Foundation, and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), announced the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals Impact Finance Initiative, with a goal to mobilize up to one billion Swiss francs in private capital to advance measurable impact in developing countries.The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) refer to the 17 categories of goals adopted as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by world leaders at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015, with the aim to protect the planet and improve the quality of life globally. SDG targets include ending poverty and hunger, improving education, and protecting the environmen...

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), one of the leading organizations promoting standardized ESG reporting, announced today that climate research provider and environmental disclosure platform CDP will participate in the process to update the GRI Biodiversity Standard. The organizations also stated that CDP will use the updated standard, once published, to inform its own disclosure system.Additionally, GRI announced that it has accepted an invitation to join the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures’ (TNFD) TNFD Forum and become a TNFD Knowledge Hub partner. Launched in June 2021, TNFD aims to deliver a framework for organisations to report and act on evolving nature-related risks, with a goal to establish the framework in 2023. GRI announced that the updated biodivers...

Walmart, along with HSBC and climate research provider and environmental disclosure platform CDP, announced today the launch of a supply chain finance program incentivizing and helping suppliers to set science-based emissions reduction targets, in a bid to advance the retail giant’s efforts to address its Scope 3 emissions footprint.According to Walmart, the program marks the next step in its supply chain emissions reduction initiative, Project Gigaton. Launched in 2017, the project aims to eliminate 1 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions from its global supply chain by 2030. To date, over 3,100 suppliers have signed on to the initiative, resulting in cumulative avoided emissions of 416 million metric tons of CO2e.