Active Shareowner Update
Third Quarter 2025
Boston Common’s shareholder stewardship and portfolio company engagement efforts seek to sustain and build stakeholder value by advocating for improved corporate processes and policies. Each quarter, our Active Shareowner Update captures this work in progress and celebrates the results of our efforts. Thanks to the valuable insights this work generates, our approach continues to evolve, with a deepening understanding of how companies assess and mitigate sustainability risks and invest in sustainable innovation. We are honored to share this work—a critical component of our comprehensive approach to enabling clients to align their investments with their values.
WBA Ethical AI Coalition honored at the 2025 PRI Awards
We are excited to share that the World Benchmarking Alliance’s Collective Impact Coalition (CIC) on Ethical AI, which Boston Common co-leads alongside fellow investors and civil society partners, has received the 2025 PRI Award for “Recognition for Action – Human Rights.”
In expressing her gratitude for the honor, Boston Common’s Lauren Compere highlighted the coalition’s collaborative efforts: “We are proud to be a founding co-lead investor and member of the WBA Ethical AI steering committee. The cornerstone of the significant progress and success we have seen since 2022 is the data-driven approach supported by the WBA research team, the knowledge sharing of key experts, including WBA CSO members, and the uptake of this knowledge by investors to inform complex engagement across a range of AI business models and regions. This adaptive model will enable further progress in the next phase.”
Renewable Energy and Human Rights
Climate Week NYC Focus
In September, the Business and Human Rights Resource Center (BHRRC) released the 2025 edition of the Renewable Energy and Human Rights Benchmark. The benchmark enables investors to assess the human rights practices and policies of companies operating in the renewable energy sector, which we believe is crucial to monitor, despite recent political headwinds. Boston Common’s Steven Heim was a technical advisor for the development of the 2019 – 2020 benchmark, where his focus was on Indigenous Peoples’ rights—one of the four “deep dive” topics in the 2025 report.
Boston Common has co-led collaborative engagements with three of the Human Rights Benchmark’s top-performing companies: First Solar, Vestas Wind, and Orsted. Our engagements with these and other companies focused on human rights and responsible manufacturing and sourcing. We have also engaged SQM, a key lithium miner, on Indigenous Peoples’ rights and responsible water practices.
In September, Steven joined a New York Climate Week discussion “Accelerating Responsible and Reliable Renewable Energy,” where he detailed why respecting human rights in wind and solar operations matters to investors. Steven’s investor lens was balanced by representation from the corporate sector, Indigenous-led wind/solar developers, and human rights experts. All panelists emphasized the importance of protecting human rights in the energy transition, particularly the rights of the Indigenous Peoples and communities likely to play a significant role in the renewable energy value chain.
Change Chemistry Annual Meeting
Takeaways from the 2025 Innovators Roundtable
By: Constantina Bichta, PhD, Associate Director of Sustainability Research
In September, I attended the annual meeting of Change Chemistry, a multi-stakeholder forum comprising corporations, academic institutions, start-ups, investors, regulators, and nonprofits that collectively work to accelerate the development and commercialization of green and sustainable chemistry solutions.
The Forum, originally known as the “Green Chemistry and Commerce Council,” has been running for two decades. This year, its members gathered to reflect on its achievements of the past twenty years and to imagine what its work will look like over the next twenty.
Plastics Waste Commitment Update
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, launched in 2018, aims to create a circular economy for plastics. The Global Commitment, as it is now known, initially brought together leading companies committed to working towards a goal of 100% reusable, recyclable, or compostable plastic packaging by 2025. As 2025 nears its close, however, the Global Commitment’s latest Progress Report highlights that while signatories outpaced non-signatory peers on ambition, many fell behind on their original targets.
While the Global Commitment is falling short of its initial expectations, global regulation of plastics continues to set ambitious goals. The United Nations Environmental Programme’s (UNEP) Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee reconvened in August to continue developing a legally binding instrument on plastic pollution—an effort supported by many of our portfolio companies. We took the opportunity to check in with portfolio companies that were either identified as top plastic waste producers or had signed on to the Global Commitment. These companies included Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, L’Oreal, Apple, Schneider Electric, and Beiersdorf AG. We inquired about several relevant issues, including updated target ambitions now that 2025 is winding down. We are working to schedule company dialogues in the fourth quarter of 2025.
Boston Common officially endorsed the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment in 2018. We have engaged portfolio companies on phasing out harmful plastics since 2003.
Biodiversity Updates
Recently, new data sets have allowed us to strengthen portfolio monitoring for biodiversity risks. We now have the ability to measure potential species loss due to business activities, including land use change and climate change, among other drivers. As of the third quarter of 2025, the ten portfolio holdings carrying the highest biodiversity risk are concentrated in the consumer staples and materials sectors, each of which tends to carry a relatively high risk of impacting natural ecosystems due to their reliance on natural resources. Recent outreach to several of these companies has revealed that many are deepening their understanding of their respective operational footprints in relation to biodiversity risks, and many are taking action to reduce their reliance on nature.
Banking Case Study
Financial Sector Deforestation Action (FSDA)
By: Lauren Compere, Head of Stewardship and Engagement
Robust due diligence is necessary to protect banks and their clients from the regulatory, reputational, and financial risks associated with deforestation and biodiversity loss. In 2021 alone, banks and investors provided $2.6 trillion to companies with the highest exposure to deforestation. Meanwhile, existing guidance is not aligned with a banking business model. In September of 2024, we co-authored the FSDA investor expectations on deforestation for commercial and investment banks to address the guidance gap. More recently, we have used these expectations to conduct baseline assessments of ten emerging market and Asian banks in Colombia (1), Hungary (1), India (2), Indonesia (1), Hong Kong (1), Japan (2), the Philippines (1), and Singapore (1). This information has informed our 2025 engagement outreach.
This piece is intended as an editorial review of a survey of risk considerations and does not constitute investment advice, a solicitation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Past performance does not guarantee future results. All investments involve risk, including the risk of loss of principal.
Company developments described in this report occurred during the period of our engagement but should not be assumed to have resulted from Boston Common’s activities. Where we believe our engagement contributed to a development, we describe the basis for that assessment.
References to third-party research, publications, and data sources are provided for informational purposes only. Boston Common Asset Management does not warrant the accuracy or completeness of third-party information cited herein. Readers should consult original sources and qualified professional advisors before making any investment decision.
