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Corporate Dialogues

INCR believes constructive dialogue between investors, corporations and environmental and social stakeholders is the best way to identify solutions to sustainability risks that threaten capital markets – from shrinking water supplies to human rights and safety concerns to rising carbon emissions.

INCR helps investors engage with corporations directly through unique and customized stakeholder engagements as well as indirectly through shareowner engagements.

Stakeholder Engagement

Stakeholders sitting around a table. INCR members, as well as investors in the Ceres Coalition, engage directly with Ceres Network Companies on a variety of sustainability issues. These company-specific dialogues help all stakeholders better understand a particular company’s environmental and social impacts, identify emerging risks and seize opportunities that meaningfully contribute to improved sustainability performance.

Learn more about Ceres' stakeholder engagement on the Ceres website.

Shareholder Resolutions

Investors Raising Hands. As a member of Ceres’ Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), investors work collaboratively to engage corporations and industries on sustainability risks and opportunities through the filing of shareholder resolutions.

Customized shareholder support is available to INCR members seeking engagement on specific sustainability risks and opportunities. In recent years, INCR has supported company dialogs on investor concerns ranging from sustainable homebuilding practices to disposal of coal ash, enabling change in corporate practices that once threatened long-term profitability and social or human health.

INCR helps coordinate investor filing – and often successful withdrawal – of proxy proposals asking companies to better disclose material risks of climate change, water scarcity and energy use as well as ask companies to set aggressive goals to minimize risk from sustainability-related issues.

Download investor memos supporting shareholder resolutions from this year's proxy season.

INCR Members in Action

"Climate change may be out of vogue in Washington today, but it poses serious financial risks that are not going away and will only increase the longer we delay enacting sensible policies to transition to a low-carbon economy. The nation’s leaders should take the cue from California, where strong clean energy policies have spurred American innovation and created thousands of jobs."
– Jack Ehnes, Chief Executive Officer of the California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS), Ceres Board Member, INCR Member

SMALL TRI-STATE WIELDS BIG INFLUENCE on GHG Reductions

Smoke Stack One of INCR’s smallest members, Tri-State Coalition under the direction of Sister Pat Daley, has led the vanguard of investors pressing some of the world’s largest companies to establish greenhouse gas reduction goals for their operations. Read more….

Investors Raise the bar on Climate and Energy Resolutions

Investors Raising Hands. The 2011 proxy season has seen a 50 percent increase in climate- and energy-related shareholder resolutions filed in with coal, electric power and oil companies. A record 66 climate and energy resolutions were filed with 41 companies in this sector. Learn more...