Positive Impact Business and Finance: A Challenge for Industries and Services, A Preeminent Role for the Financial Sector

Positive Impact Business (PIB) has to be integrated into the mainstream strategy of industry and services, since the growth of the population to nine billion by 2050 will create great business opportunities. PIB will have to address the market with the basic needs of the population (housing, access to energy and water, food security, transportation, health, education), while consideration of the limits of the planet will require new technologies and business models. But the main hurdle (and that is the primary environmental and social responsibility of the financial community) will be the huge, anticipated, long-term financial gap at a time when the United Nations estimates the need for annual investment of between US$1,300 billion and US$9,600 billion. Fundamentally, this is what the creation of a successful long-term debt PIB asset class is all about.