BlackRock underlined its efforts to give its clients more direct participation in corporate shareholder votes and its record of voting against shareholder proposals that focused on climate in its latest proxy voting report as it responds to sustained Republican scrutiny of investing based on ESG, or environmental, social, and governance. 

The asset manager said it supported only a small minority of environment-related proposals in the 2023-24 proxy voting year, even though they made up the majority of shareholder proposals, increasing by 13% year on year.