Environmental proposals continued to permeate corporate America, with well over 100 proposals on corporate ballots—a number that remains essentially flat from last year.32 Among these proposals, climate change-related proposals continued to dominate, though proponents also pushed issues such as biodiversity and deforestation.
As in years past, proponents often couch their requests in terms of financial or reputational risk, making broad claims that using corporate resources to pursue environmental goals will help shareholders.
Notably, however, proponents often fail to present persuasive data or analysis linking the two, and their motives are often transparently political.
These proposals came as ESG investing has faced increased scrutiny in the past year. Climate Action 100+―an investor coalition that has initiated and backed many climate proposals―has faced high-level departures and scrutiny from U.S. antitrust regulators.33 Nonetheless, the impact of these departures is not yet clear, as many firms have committed to pushing environmental goals through their own in-house engagement teams and remain members of other climate-focused groups such as Net Zero Asset Managers.34
Because Strive believes a company’s fiduciary obligation is to maximize shareholder value, not encumber itself with activist-driven climate constraints, we generally voted against all environmental proposals that sought to obligate a company to climate-related commitments. Below are descriptions of some of the most common types of environmental proposals encountered by Strive this past season, along with explanations of our votes.
