Lars Hassel nominated for Nordic Council environmental prize 2010
NEWS
Lars G. Hassel, program director for Sustainable Investments at the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (MISTRA) and professor of accounting at the Umeå School of Business at Umeå University, has been nominated for the Nordic Council nature and environment prize.
The prize is awarded to a Nordic enterprise, organisation or individual, which has managed in an exemplary way to integrate consideration for nature and the environment into their business or work, or which, in some other way, has made an extraordinary effort for nature and the environment.
The winner receives a prize worth 350,000 Danish crowns (approx. €47,000) which will be distributed at the Nordic Council’s meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland this autumn.
Since 2006, researchers at the Sustainable Investment Research Platform (SIRP) have studied how sustainable investing can be profitable to institutional investors, especially pension funds that have a longer perspective in its investments. Large institutional investors also have a power to influence companies towards a more sustainable development. Simultaneously, there are limits as to how far investor responsibility can go. The program is funded by MISTRA.
In 2008, Lars Hassel and two colleagues published the highly acclaimed book “CSR – from risk to value” with the accounting firm Öhrlings PricewaterhouseCoopers which argued that deliberate efforts with sustainability issues increased market value for owners. The largest investors and managers have become signatories to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI). Hassel is a member of the UN-PRI Academic Network committee, which works for greater interaction between academics and practitioners in the financial markets
The Globe Forum Award for Best Corporate Social Reponsibility (CSR) Research was awarded to the Sustainable Investment Research Platform (SIRP) in 2008, "for outstanding and tangible research in the field of CSR."
