Earth Security CEO Alejandro Litovsky was a panellist at a Morgan Stanley forum on political risks in sub-Saharan Africa, organized by Morgan Stanley’s Metals & Mining and Oil & Gas teams in London for institutional clients.

Alejandro Litovsky joined a small panel of three with Dr Sandie Hardy, Morgan Stanley’s Senior Advisor formerly a member of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 1973 to 2001; and Joe Poraj-Wilczynski, former leader of the UN Military Observer Team in Sierra Leone in 2000 and currently an independent security advisor.

The panel covered the changing political, economic and security challenges in the region given the perceived trend of resource nationalism. Earth Security discussed the links between sustainability and political risk, given the evidence of growing tensions between land, water, food, energy and climate change, and what this means for financial analysts and institutional investors when assessing projects in the extractives sector. Given these resource pressures, the relationship between corporations and their host communities is evolving. What is the next step in this evolution?

International investors have a role to play in helping direct capital to companies that positively affect their host communities and resource environments. The growing connection between resource sustainability and security is of critical importance to the global financial sector. The panel and the discussion reflected the view that extractive companies that pay attention to, and genuinely engage in sustainable development, can reduce the security risks they face and lower their cost of capital.