David Atkin, the London-based chief executive of the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investing, speaks fondly of idyllic childhood years spent running barefoot through the rainforest around Kokoda, in Papua New Guinea’s highlands. It was the late 1960s, pre-independence, and Australian public servants and teachers were there in large numbers to help develop and educate the country.

Atkin’s mother, Rosemary, was a teacher and the family of five were there, he says, because of her Wesleyan Methodist heritage which fostered a belief in social justice. In 1970, the family returned to Melbourne’s south-east to live in Doveton West with Atkin’s British-born grandparents.