Aviva’s Abigail Herron talks to us about her particular interest in antibiotic resistance.

Abigail Herron, Global Head of ESG Strategic Partnerships, Aviva Investors, tells us more about her role and her particular interest in Antibiotic Resistance.

Abigail is a leader and ambassador of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues and sustainable finance within Aviva Investors. She has a special interest in antibiotic resistance and is co-founder of the Superbugs and Super Risks series of events and reports for investors. Her Master’s thesis on the role large investors can play in tackling antibiotic resistance at the University of Cambridge won the French Social Investment Forum and Principles of Responsible Investment award for best Master’s thesis, 2020. She is an ambassador for the Global AMR Insights Network, an Antibiotic Action Champion, sits on the Advisory Council for the AMR Preparedness Index and works with the Investor Year of Action on AMR to raise the profile of AMR within the investment community.

I was sat in the office one summers day in June 2015 when and our head of equities dropped by my desk to tell me about a BBC Panorama documentary called Antibiotic Apocalypse. Up to this point I had some very vague awareness of antibiotic resistance but mistakenly assumed it was due to doctors handing them out like sweets. This documentary really opened my eyes to the scale and severity of the issue and kick-started Aviva Investors work on AMR.

In 2016, we convened and chaired the first ever investor conference on AMR with the UK Government’s Antimicrobial Resistance Review team. Lord Jim O’Neill was the keynote speaker to a standing room only audience of investment analysts and fund managers. In 2017, we were the only insurer and investor to be invited to address the Call to Action Conference on Antimicrobial Resistance, convened by Dame Sally Davies, then the UK’s Chief Medical Officer, the UN Foundation and UK Government and at the invitation of the Wellcome Trust. At the 2018 EAT Forum in Stockholm the then Aviva plc Chief Executive gave a keynote on sustainable agriculture and launched a report that identified AMR as a blind spot for investors.

In World Antibiotics Awareness Week we launched the first ever investor guide to antibiotics engagement, Superbugs and Super risks: the investment case for action. We used this guide to encourage change at companies we invest in, including McDonalds and KFC.

I recently completed a Master’s Degree at the University of Cambridge which focused on the most effective actions investors can take to tackle AMR as part of our series of reports and events focused on Superbugs and Super Risks. My focus then turned to the Investor Year of Action on AMR – a collaboration between investors and the UK Government to galvanize investor efforts to address global antimicrobial resistance. Previously I spent time taking to the companies we invest in on AMR to encourage them to adopt better antimicrobial stewardship. Now I spend my time engaging with policy maker at a UK, G7, and multilateral level such as the Global Leaders Group about the economics of antibiotics and the investor viewpoint. We have five key policy asks which we detail in our most recent report Confronting a Permacrisis (2022) which highlights the intersection between antimicrobial resistance, climate change and biodiversity loss and was written with the University of Exeter and the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.

1. An international platform of scientists to address AMR, modelled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

2. A ban on the use of antimicrobials in agricultural supply chains for prophylactic treatment and growth stimulation, modelled on the Montreal Protocol.

3. Global leadership from the G7, G20 and G77. Under the UK G7 Presidency, finance ministers committed to strengthen antimicrobial development through ‘pull’ incentive mechanisms for the developers of novel antimicrobials; we seek further progress to ensure rewards are titled towards societal value rather than product volume.

4. Tighter standard setting and enforcement of water quality related to wastewater from antibiotic use and in the production of antibiotics in watercourses and public bathing areas.

5. Coherent national responses, where governments embed antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) in health, economic, trade and financial decision-making processes and within regulatory and legislative architecture.

Together, we believe these actions could help underpin the delivery of the UN SDGs. It will promote a more rigorous, science-led approach to quantify AMR risks, and ensure an appropriate commercial response to preserve the utility of antimicrobials and drive research into the development of novel treatments, including those planned for ‘last-line-of-defence’

Addressing antimicrobial stewardship is an urgent priority because we consider AMR a systemic risk that threatens the functioning of global markets, with potentially catastrophic human and environmental consequences.

Investors need to be made aware they face material risks by investing in companies that do not appreciate how fast AMR is growing, its impacts, and that risk is accruing for those ill-prepared for tighter restrictions on antimicrobial use.

The COVID-19 pandemic shows how a global public health crisis is a systemic risk from which portfolio diversification offers little or no protection. As such, diversified portfolios are at risk from AMR proliferation, even when individual company contributors in those portfolios are not themselves at material financial risk.

But it isn’t just health that’s at risk from the spread of drug-resistant ‘superbugs’: dangerously high levels of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) risk wiping $100 trillion off potential global output by 2050. Investors who ignore the threat of AMR to asset valuations do so at their peril.

During her 17 years in responsible investment Abigail has engaged with companies and policy makers on the A to Z of ESG topics – from aviation emissions to zero hour contracts. She is currently working on the Aviva Investor’s Sustainable Finance Centre for Excellence which is building and delivering the world’s most ambitious ESG agenda on market reform– continuing to push boundaries toward a more sustainable financial system through thought leadership, advocacy and education. The scope of this work includes, but is not limited to, market reform activity to compliment company engagement around antibiotic resistance, biodiversity, climate change, net zero and transition plans, pollution, human rights, gender and neurodiversity, and a just transition.

Follow her on:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/abigail-herron/ @abigailherron (twitter)

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