ASCOR Progress Note
July 2024

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ASCOR project partners
The Assessing Sovereign Climate-related Opportunities and Risks (ASCOR) project is led
by asset owners, asset managers and investor networks. ASCOR is co-chaired byAdam Matthews at the Church of England Pensions Board and Victoria Barron. Esther Law
at Amundi Asset Management and Claudia Gollmeier at Colchester Global Investors arecurrently serving as acting co-chairs. The project is supported by Chronos Sustainability.
The ASCOR Steering Committee is composed of the Asia Investor Group on Climate
Change (AIGCC), the UN-convened Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance (AOA), Ceres, theInvestor Group on Climate Change (IGCC), the Institutional Investors Group on Climate
Change (IIGCC) and Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI). The ASCOR Advisory
Committee includes Aktia Bank, Allspring Global Investments, Amundi Asset Management,
Colchester Global Investors, Franklin Templeton, MFS Investment Management andNinety One. For more information, visit www.ascorproject.org/.

ASCOR project academic partner
ASCOR’s academic partner is the Transition Pathway Initiative Centre (TPI Centre), part of
the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, which is basedat the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Authors
This progress note was written by Antonina Scheer, Johannes Honneth and Carmen Nuzzo.
This progress note was first published in July 2024 by the Transition Pathway Initiative Centre.
© The authors, 2024.
Suggested citation: Scheer A, Honneth J and Nuzzo C (2024) ASCOR progress note. London:
Transition Pathway Initiative Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Cover photo by Anastasia Palagutina on Unsplash

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ASCOR project
Assessing Sovereign Climate-related Opportunities and Risks (ASCOR) is a project led byasset owners, asset managers and investor networks to develop a publicly available andindependent tool that assesses countries on climate change. The ASCOR tool was designed
as a framework of indicators to enable transparent country assessments that present theprogress made by governments on managing the low-carbon transition and the impactsof climate change. ASCOR aims to inform, support and facilitate investors’ decisionmaking on sovereign bonds and enable a more explicit consideration of climate change.
In 2023, following a public consultation, the Transition Pathway Initiative Centre (TPI Centre)
published a methodology note describing the ASCOR framework and launched the ASCOR
tool including the first assessments of 25 countries. The launch of the tool was followed byan inaugural webinar in early 2024.
This progress note announces the countries that will be assessed in 2024 alongside theassociated sovereign index coverage, and provides an outline of the ASCOR project’s
timeline of activities in 2024.

Expansion of country coverage
The ASCOR tool will expand to cover 70 countries in 2024 (see Figure 1 and Table 1).
The initial 25 countries were selected in 2023 to represent a range of geographical regions,income groups, climate risk levels and policymaking systems with the aim of testing theASCOR framework for wide applicability. The expansion adds 45 further countries based on
their weights in the main sovereign bond indices (see Table 2). The expanded universe
covers more than 85% of global greenhouse gas emissions and 90% of global GDP (incurrent international US$, adjusted for purchasing power parity).
Figure 1. Map of countries assessed in the ASCOR tool in 2023 and 2024

Assessed in 2023

Added in 2024

3Table 1. List of countries assessed in 2023 (blue) and added in 2024 (green)
Australia

ChileIndia

Kenya

South Africa

Bangladesh

China

Indonesia

MexicoThailandBarbados

Egypt

Italy

MoroccoUnited Kingdom

BrazilFranceJapan

PolandUnited States

CanadaGermany

Kazakhstan

Saudi Arabia

Uruguay

AngolaCzechia

LatviaOman

Singapore

Argentina

Denmark

Lithuania

PanamaSlovak Republic

Austria

Dominican
Republic

Luxembourg

Peru

Slovenia

Azerbaijan

Estonia

Malaysia

Philippines

Republic ofKorea

BahrainFinland

Malta

Portugal

Spain

BelgiumHong Kong

Netherlands

Qatar

SwedenColombia

Hungary

New Zealand

Romania

Switzerland

Costa RicaIreland

Nigeria

RussianFederationTürkiye

CyprusIsrael

NorwaySerbia

United ArabEmirates

Table 2. Sovereign index coverage of the ASCOR country universe in 2023 and 2024
Sovereign index coverage1

2023: 25 countries

2024: 70 countries

FTSE World Government Bond Index (WGBI)

90%

100%Bloomberg Global Treasury Index

85%

100%

65%

100%

40%

85%

45%

70%

JP Morgan Government Bond Index-Emerging
Markets (GBI-EM) Global Diversified
JP Morgan Emerging Markets Bond Index(EMBI)FTSE Frontier Emerging Markets Government
Bond Index

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Estimated based on country weights in December 2023.

42024 activities
The larger universe of 70 countries is currently in its assessment cycle and a feedback
period will be held with government representatives to ensure the accuracy of the results.
Assessment data will be published on the ASCOR tool in Q4 2024, including an update of
the assessments of the first 25 sovereign bond issuers. The data will be accompanied by ananalytical report outlining key insights and trends.
2024
Q1–Q2

Q3

Q4

•

••

Assess 70 countries

Feedback periodwith countries

Publish data and report

Through June to August 2024, regional roundtables with investors and issuers are being
held as part of the ASCOR project’s outreach activities. This roundtable series is being
undertaken in collaboration with ASCOR Advisory Committee members and local networks
in order to build further awareness of the ASCOR tool and its supporting methodology.
The aim is to create a forum for knowledge- and practice-sharing in assessing sovereign
bond investments with a climate lens and to deepen financial market participants’
understanding of government strategies for transitioning to a low-carbon economy.
Table 3. ASCOR roundtablesRegionAfrica and Middle EastAsiaEurope
Latin America
North America
Oceania

Host organisation(s)Ninety One
Colchester Global Investors and Principles for
Responsible Investment (PRI)
Amundi Asset Management and Institutional Investors
Group on Climate Change (IIGCC)
PRICeres
Investor Group on Climate Change (IGCC)and PRI

A public webinar on the use cases of ASCOR was held on 2 July 2024. These outreachactivities are conducted to facilitate the feedback progress with the issuers, gain insights
for a potential iteration of the ASCOR framework, and shape efforts by investors towards
collaborative sovereign engagement.
The tool will broaden to over 100 issuers in its next iterations after 2024 (thus covering all
countries in the major government bond indices). Country assessments will be updated
annually and be accompanied by annual analytical reports that will provide insights for theinvestor and policy community.

Stay updated on the ASCOR project:www.ascorproject.org
5Contact:
gri.ascor@lse.ac.uk