Welcome to our first quarterly Sustainable Investment Review for 2025. In this issue, we focus the spotlight on how Storebrand Asset Management is managing the risk of involvement in violations of human rights in conflict-affected and high-risk areas (CAHRA).
In focus: Conflict Risk
Human progress is something that we may all have taken for granted over the years, but violent conflict continues to rise sharply around the world: a 40% increase in the past three years, according to the ACLED Conflict Index. Increasingly, high-performing sectors such as technology and defence, are exposed to involvement in violations of human rights. With this in mind, Sam Jones, co-founder of the consultancy Heartland Initiative, joins us to share his perspective on CAHRA and how investors can proactively manage human rights risks in these areas. We provide an overview of how we manage and mitigate CAHRA risks at Storebrand AM; and show how we are collaborating to improve the investment sector's capacity to respond to these challenges.
Engagement updates
Elsewhere in our work on active ownership, we have continued our engagement with Nippon Steel regarding transparency on climate, which we provide an update on here. Human rights and labour rights also continue to be an area of focus for us. In this edition, we have updates on our engagements with Amazon.com and Tesla on these issues, as well as a joint investor call to UN member nations, seeking internationally coordinated action on living wages.
Solutions
Infrastructure is an area of growing interest, and we are pleased to share news of a new major acquisition of a solar energy project by our infrastructure boutique AIP Management. The Pine Forest project, with its 300 MW of solar power generation and co-located battery energy storage facility, will play a major role in providing renewable energy to the Dallas-Fort Worth region of Texas in the U.S.
All these, and more, including data on our engagement and voting activity, are available to explore in detail in this issue.
See a video preview from our Head of Sustainable Investment Kamil Zabielski in our Storebrand Studio Talks for Q1 and read the full report here.