Middle East can drive sustainable change through ‘Transition Investment’ Strategy: NYUAD report

Middle East can drive sustainable change through ‘Transition Investment’ Strategy: NYUAD report

ABU DHABI: UAE institutional investors should focus on transition investment as a new philosophy to further the United Nations Social Development Goals, capitalizing on their unique access to emerging markets, according to NYU Abu Dhabi’s (NYUAD) new Transition Investment Lab (TIL) Annual Report 2023. The report was launched during a workshop titled Powering the Shift to a Sustainable Economy.

Hosted by TIL in partnership with Mubadala and Al Maskari Holding, the attendees concluded that transition investment, an investment philosophy aimed at achieving socio-economic impact along with financial returns, can make a significant difference for the global economy and the region. By unlocking the capital of large institutional investors in transformational projects, Transition Investment enables the shift to a new economic paradigm based upon environmental sustainability, social inclusion, and shared prosperity.

According to the report, this form of investment is vital to overcoming the current global “polycrisis” – a simultaneous occurrence of multiple, interconnected challenges that worsen each other, making them harder to address and resolve. The polycrisis is having a devastating “scissor effect” on the investment gap – the difference between the amount of financial resources needed annually to achieve the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 and the