How sustainable investing aims to address the refugee crisis

UN Ambassador for Africa Ger Duany and Newday Impact CEO Doug Heske join the Yahoo Finance Live panel to discuss how sustainable investing is working to solve the refugee crisis.

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Well, the COVID-19 pandemic may have restricted movement globally, but the UN reports the number of refugees last year reached a new post-World War II record, with a total 82 million people displaced. And that number has doubled in just a decade. Fintech platform Newday Impact is looking to combat the crisis through sustainable investing by partnering with the UN ambassador for Africa, ahead of World Refugee Day.

Let's bring in both of our guests here. Ger Duany is UN ambassador for Africa. We've also got Doug Heske, Newday Impact CEO. Good to talk to both of you. Ger, I want to start with your story. You've talked a lot about family members who have been displaced as well. But when you look at this total number the UN has put forward, 82 million people, what's accelerated that number?

GER DUANY: Well, first, I'd like to thanks for having me here. And, yes, of course, as a former refugees who arrive in the United States at a very early age, I totally understood exactly the situation of the refugees. Because I have lived in many different refugee camps in East Africa way before I came to United States. So I have lived in Kenya, in Ethiopia. And then later on, I have find way to come to the United States.

So in 2015, when my new country was plunged into a civil war, so I had to join the UNHCR to use my platform to share my story so that the refugees' plight can be looked at in a very keen way. So that is the reason I was a UNHCR goodwill ambassador to East and all of Africa.

ZACK GUZMAN: And Doug, I mean, we've talked about your platform. We talked years ago about Newday Impact and the way that it helps investors put their funds to work when it comes to causes, when it's ocean health, climate action, and now the refugee crisis. I mean, how do these investments, how does it directly help the refugee crisis here? And how does it all function on Newday?

DOUG HESKE: Yeah, Zack, thank you. Great to see you again, too. So when we talk about sustainability and a healthy planet, we can't talk about either one of those without talking about a healthy humanity. And that was an expression that was coined by one of the fathers of the sustainability movement, Jacques Cousteau.

There couldn't be a better example of the connection between humanity and climate change than the refugee crisis. When you look at the numbers, as Akiko had previously stated, they are absolutely staggering. So what we're trying to do is to give individuals and institutions an opportunity to engage behind not just the refugee crisis but all of these really important sustainability issues, whether it be ocean or clean water or refugees.

So what we're doing at Newday is giving people and institutions that opportunity for engagement, to get informed, get involved, and perhaps, and most importantly, get invested behind these things. There's some really amazing work that's going on today and a lot of very [AUDIO OUT] attributes associated with the crisis. Organizations like Unilever, who own Ben & Jerry's, are making major investments to employment of refugees. There are other organizations like Microsoft, globally, that are making or taking major initiatives to bring people into the fold so that they are better integrated into the communities in which they're going to.

AKIKO FUJITA: So, Doug, is the idea here to invest in those companies that have those type of programs set up?

DOUG HESKE: Yeah, the idea is really three things. That we need to better educate the world on the [AUDIO OUT] of this crisis. So as I said, as you said, the numbers are staggering. 80 million people, which is roughly the size of Germany today, the population of Germany. But more importantly, it's estimated that approximately 750 million people could get displaced by the turn of the century, by 2100. There are potentially more than a billion infants that are potentially born into a malnourished environment.

So we want people to get educated. We also want them to get involved. We want them to use their voices to advocate for change at corporate organizations to encourage them to be hiring more people. And we want them to get invested. So invest in public organizations that are actually doing this really, really good work. And this is a powerful movement right now that's been born out of this younger generation that are effecting change faster than anybody else today. So we're all about collective action. And this very much is a collective action problem. We need to get more people involved in making this change. There's a lot more information that people can get by going directly to the Newday website or downloading the Newday mobile application.

AKIKO FUJITA: And, Ger, when you think about the UN's outlook on this crisis, things don't look particularly optimistic. They've talked a lot about displacement as a result of climate change, too. And I wonder if you can speak to some of these other factors that you think could really contribute to what is already a significant crisis. We're talking 82 million now. What are the other factors that need to be addressed in order to keep the number lower?

GER DUANY: Well, in case of refugees, especially in the eastern Horn of Africa is the place that is being dominated by refugees completely, especially in my country, South Sudan, generated with three million refugees right now that are living in Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia. And also when you think about Ethiopia, for the current conflicts between Ethiopia and Tigray, you generate millions of the refugees that are living in Sudan.

And then this entire East Africa, it's always a place with a high risk situation where people are being displaced. And sometimes when the borders are being closed on refugees, it becomes very difficult for them to really have a place to settle. So I think that's when, you know, international law should really get involved so that refugees can be protected before they really lose hope totally and then not knowing what to do after all. So these are the things that I've seen in East Africa for a long time, yes.

AKIKO FUJITA: It's certainly an important discussion to have here. And I want to thank both of you for joining us today. Ger Duany, UN Ambassador for Africa, and Doug Heske, Newday impact CEO.