Terra Carta: Prince Charles urges super funds to go green

The Prince of Wales pitched for the funds to participate in nine new alliances under his recently launched Earth charter to help industries transition to sustainability and "bring prosperity into harmony with nature".

The charter, known as Terra Carta and inspired by the Magna Carta, was launched along with the first alliance earlier this year focused on nature-renewal spending, with signatories including HSBC and an Australian green finance fund Pollination.

"We want signatories to work to ensure that investment and financial flows are consistent with a low carbon and nature-positive future," said while opening the Conference of Superannuation Trustees in Adelaide on Tuesday.

"Through this approach, we will demonstrate that investing in sustainability and building prosperity are not mutually exclusive. After all, a sustainable future is the growth story of our time."

The first of the alliances was targeting $10 billion by next year towards impact-oriented nature capital investment options for institutional investors such as superannuation funds.

Some of the investment propositions would be particularly relevant for Australian investors, he said, involving reducing emissions from avoiding land clearing, reducing methane from livestock, improving soil and reducing fertilizer runoff from farm activities onto the Great Barrier Reef.

"Adopting these more sustainable practices provides the opportunity to preserve the long-term productivity of the farmland, while also being positioned to capture additional income from the soil carbon, and potentially from Queensland reef credits," he said.

The British royal said that Australia's superannuation funds had been pioneering leaders in social justice for older Australians, and this was an opportunity to lead improvement for the health of the planet and future generations.

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"By triangulating country priorities, industry priorities, and investment priorities, we have a unique opportunity to build a genuinely sustainable markets we require to achieve a durable future."

Time was fast running out, the prince said, noting nature has experiencing mass extinctions.

"Timelines for change must be brought forward if we are to make a transformative shift by the end of the decade, before it is quite literally too late."

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