Divesting from heavy polluting companies may look good on paper and appease ESG-diehards, but has minimal impact on reducing emissions and can end up doing more harm than good, according to Ninety One’s chief sustainability officer.

“While there may be an intuitive attraction to selling your high-emitting companies, there’s actually no impact on real-world emissions from doing that,” Nazmeera Moola told Financial News ahead of the COP27 conference this week.