Edinburgh recently hosted a global conference on Ethical Finance, led by Dr Omar Shaikh, Managing Director of the Global Ethical Finance (GEFI) Alliance. Omar’s pioneering leadership in building a community of leaders who have a genuine commitment to sustainability has been truly laudable.
I was there all last week and met a large number of leaders from Britain and abroad committed to transforming the world to meet the challenges of climate change and inequality. Dame Susan Rice is the Chair of GEFI and a genuine pioneer in ethical banking and finance. My good friend David-Pitt Watson was one of the first investment professionals at Hermes to advise Boards on long-term business and finance by engaging with them instead of selling their shares when unhappy with the performance. He is a Visiting Professor at Cambridge and recently won an FT award for the best Sustainable Finance course there.
At the conference, I met both the Scottish First Minister John Swinney and Kate Forbes the Deputy First Minister and had long conversations with them about their personal views on Ethical Finance. Both have finance experience from their previous careers, and Kate Forbes was born in India and is a qualified Chartered Accountant, who is jointly providing important leadership to build an Ethical Finance ecosystem here in Edinburgh. They see an opportunity in green finance but are also conscious of the need for authenticity and ethics.
At this conference, I had the opportunity to explain my research on how Dharmic philosophy has a very unique science of finance. Very few people in the world are discussing or teaching this, yet it is so timely and relevant given our vast challenges. The simple idea is that interdependence has been woven into our culture and values for thousands of years, and whilst the world is being forced to react to the climate crisis, we already have the wisdom which can shine a bright torch. More importantly, our science was not developed as a reaction to climate change, or even in panic due to the depth and breadth of the crisis, but much, much earlier, when nature was plentiful and everywhere, with little pollution or drought.
MORE LIKE THIS…
As a result, our science has much more integrity and authenticity, than what is being framed today as Ethical Finance. Also, it is a science for the whole world, not just for India. After having attended these conferences over a number of years and spoken for GEFI, most recently at the Barclays Headquarters in London, we ought to host a global conference on this theme in India such that visitors can not only meet one another, but experience living Dharma and its application in social, environmental and ethical finance. One of the keynote speakers was Mr Satya Tripathi, who is a former Assistant Secretary General at the United Nations, and a massive transformer of organic farming in India, recently winning a global prize for his leadership. Satya draws deeply from Indian tradition of wisdom and sustainable land management and is planting seeds of hope among small farmers in Andhra Pradesh and beyond.
May the whole world awaken to the criticality of finance in transforming our ecosystem for planetary good by changing its practices, goals, institutions and priorities. For far too long, it has spread inequality and expropriated the environment with a very greedy short-term agenda. This is why we are seeing such planetary devastation today. In my latest research project, I am writing a new Organic Theory of Finance to shape the science in an altogether ethical and sustainable dimension.
MORE LIKE THIS…
Professor Atul K. Shah [@atulkshah] teaches and writes about Indian wisdom on business, culture and community at various UK universities and is a renowned international author, speaker and broadcaster.