Measuring and managing the impact of sustainable investments : a two axes mapping

To mobilise and align finance to the SDGs, and, most importantly, to achieve impact, both public and private actors need to implement effective impact measurement and management practices. Impact management enables investors, enterprises and other stakeholders to include positive and negative impact considerations into investment and business decisions. Impact measurement allows organisations to set impact objectives, monitor impact performance and evaluate impact. The increasing focus of investors on “impact” has led to the development of a large number of principles, frameworks, standards, certifications, tools and indicators for impact management and measurement. The crowded nature of this space and the multiplicity and different understanding of terms and concepts makes it hard to navigate. This paper attempts to bring some clarity in this space, by proposing a two-axes mapping of the existing (i) principles, (ii) frameworks and methodologies, (iii) standards, certifications and ratings and (iv) metrics and indicators to manage and measure impact of sustainable investments targeting the SDGs. In addition, the paper applies the mapping approach to a series of existing initiatives, highlighting the complexity and range of principles, frameworks, methodologies, standards and metrics that exist to measure and manage impact and providing interesting initial insights into the level of consensus in the space of investing for sustainable development.