THE Church of England Pensions Board has published draft guiding principles to inform its efforts to support the climate transition in emerging economies.

The Pensions Board joined forces earlier this year with 11 other pension funds to form the Emerging Markets Just Transition Investment Initiative (News, 27 May).

The guiding principles, announced last Friday, will “provide the foundation” for the Pensions Board’s work as part of the initiative, a statement said. It would “support our investment decision making, investment approaches and future allocations to emerging markets”.

The statement went on to say that the 12 funds “already invest across asset classes in EM [emerging markets], but [we] wanted to ensure we have a credible intentional basis to practically support the transition in emerging economies in line with our fiduciary responsibility to provide pensions”.

The guiding principles are to “advocate for a fair transition in Emerging Markets”; to “align our policies and approaches to understand and enable a just transition in Emerging Markets”; and to “practically work to de-risk investments in support of intentional allocations within and across asset classes”.

The Pensions Board is now seeking feedback on the draft before the guidelines are finalised next year.