As global warming has deteriorated, the extreme climate has accelerated, and the COVID-19 pandemic has been raging over the past two years, corporations’ sustainable development has become even more significant. International research has shown that corporations that value the importance of ESG and sustainable development are equipped with more powerful resilience to withstand external shocks. As the financial sector is dominant in promoting a country’s sustainable development, an increasing number of international financial institutes have incorporated ESG principles into the criteria or weight distribution principles of their investment targets. It urges the invested companies to catch up with the trend of sustainable development. According to a survey of the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance, GSIA, the global sustainable investment capital reached USD 35.3 trillion in 2020, which is a 15% increase compared with the capital in 2018, and the percentage of sustainable investment accounted for almost 36% of the assets under management, AUM. As “The 2021 Taiwan Sustainable Investment Survey” has shown, Taiwan’s 2020 SRI investment capital was USD 600 billion, with 37% of AUM being sustainable investments. This ratio is slightly higher than the global average ratio in the survey of GSIA.
Compared with the global sustainable investment amount released by GSIR, Taiwan’s sustainable investment amount accounts for approximately 1.8% of the global capital. Following the launch of Corporate Governance 3.0, and Green Finance Action Plan 2.0, the FSC released the three-year-long Transition Strategies of Sustainable Development for Securities and Futures Sectors this March. Under relevant policies, such as TCFD guidelines announced by Life Insurance Association and the Bankers Association, and the global ESG trend, it is believed that Taiwan’s sustainable investment will gain more momentum and entirely link up with the world.