Investimenti sovrani e sostenibilita ambientale: strategie, buone pratiche e risvolti processuali

Sovereign investors, and particularly sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), can play a key role in promoting sustainability through their investments. Their long-term horizon, typically focused on future generations, may lead to climate change considerations playing an important role in defining their strategies. This article examines the main avenues pursued by SWFs and their home States in recent years to integrate environmental and climate change considerations into their investment agendas, focusing also on some procedural aspects. Prominent strategies include the establishment of international networks of State investments vehicles (such as "One Planet Sovereign Wealth Funds") and some proposals to amend the "Santiago Principles", a non-binding set of guidelines for SWFs. However, there has been criticism that SWFs' approach to the environmental transition may be more business-oriented than philanthropic. The analysis then turns to the procedural challenges posed by the hybrid public-private nature of SWFs in the context of climate change litigation, focusing on the implications of the rule of State immunity (at both the adjudicative and executive stages).