This is encouraging: the UN Principles for Responsible Investment has taken a stand. 

The UN PRI - as it is known - is an initiative based on a set of principles for responsible investment. Asset managers and major investment institutions (including pension funds, insurers) who sign up to the principles commit to their implementation over time. There are currently 573 signatories.

Each year signatories are supposed to evidence their commitment by completing an annual questionnaire about their progress on implementation. Apparently five did not do so, and so they have been chucked out.

According to Environmental Finance:

The five that failed to respond this year were: DESBAN, a supplementary pension plan for employees of Brazil's Development Bank of Minas Gerais; New York-based Christopher Reynolds Foundation; Australia's Foresters Community Finance; and South African firms Oasis Group Holdings and Trinity Holdings.

Furthermore, three institutions voluntarily left the initiative: Mennonite Mutual Aid, Rapaki Property Group and the New York State Teachers' Retirement System (NYSTRS). The latter is one of the 10 largest pension funds in the US, with almost $100 billion under management.

It took a long time and much criticism before the sister initiative (or is that daddy?) - the UN Global Compact - began to get aggressive with signatories who failed to do anything at all to honor their commitment. Looks like the UN PRI has learnt from that lesson.

The acid test, of course, will be whether they will ever develop a concept of "sufficient progress" towards implementation of the principles. The principles themselves are pretty vague, but there is enough there to make it clear when a signatory is free-riding, provided someone is verifying their annual reports for accuracy.