This quarter, investors grappled with the long-awaited, but ultimately underwhelming, climate disclosure rule adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The watered-down rule comes to the relief of corporate management and their trade associations, who lobbied to weaken it. The rule is not the last word on climate disclosure, as standards evolve, but the impacts of delayed action also bear a social and environmental cost.

Despite two ongoing wars, devastating extreme weather events, and a clearer sense of the magnitude and speed of biodiversity loss, we enter the new year encouraged, nonetheless, by positive learnings from the past year and confident in the long-term impact of our advocacy efforts. As we enter a possibly tumultuous election year, we are emboldened by recent union-led wins, the rising voices of workers, and reminded of the importance of fortifying our democracy.

This quarter, Zevin Asset Management continued to share our perspective on racial equity investing, filed our first resolution of the season, and sent letters to pharmaceutical companies and their trade associations to advance health equity. In other news, we continue to defend corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives against political headwinds and have joined global efforts to protect our fragile biodiversity.

This quarter, our work continued in earnest, focused on international and domestic advocacy across some of our largest holdings. Despite setbacks in this season’s proxy voting results, driven mostly by right wing opposition to sustainable investing, we are empowered by our partners and stakeholders.

This quarter, Zevin Asset Management leveraged its voice to advocate for workplace equity and called on one of the largest asset managers to walk the talk on climate change. Several Zevin Asset Management-led shareholder resolutions at Alphabet, AbbVie, and UPS will soon go to vote at the companies’ annual general meetings with the goals of advancing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues.