First up as a backgrounder, from Reuters, September 29:
Buzzing bees join Wall Street’s bulls and bears as framework to report biodiversity risk launches
Wall Street, the bastion of bulls and bears, would seem to be embracing bees and biodiversity.
In an effort to stop mounting nature losses, the world’s largest companies and financial institutions have produced a global reporting framework to hold themselves and other companies to account for their damaging Impacts on biodiversity and other natural resources that underpin the global economy.
The corporate disclosure recommendations, developed by the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), were unveiled at New York’s Climate Week, and a week later in London, amid a sea of expectations and anxiety. Governments and a growing number of businesses are scrambling to halt escalating deforestation and biodiversity declines that also contribute to climate change.
The voluntary guidance – close on the heels of a landmark global pact aimed at halting and reversing biodiversity losses by 2030 – calls for companies to assess and disclose nature-related risks, impacts and dependencies across their value chains. The Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted by nearly 200 governments in December, aims to conserve 30% of the world’s lands and oceans in the next seven years.
“We need to change the relationship between business, finance and nature,” the TNFD’s co-chair David Craig said, in announcing the guidance and warning of “a dead planet” if tangible action isn’t taken. “This is a crisis of our own making.”
The backdrop for the launch was the New York Stock Exchange, which was adorned with billboard-sized images of pollinating bees for the occasion.
“If we acknowledge that ‘business as usual’ is no longer an option and that nature needs to be brought into the heart of business and financial decision making, then we need a new mascot,” TNFD Executive Director Tony Goldner told a packed audience. “At the TNFD, we have embraced the bee, an essential provider of prosperity through its pollination services.”
The symbolism was spot-on. One of every three bites of food eaten worldwide depends on pollinators, especially bees. And with annual hive losses falling steadily, both in the U.S. and globally in recent years, farmers and agriculture companies are reeling from declining crop yields.
The broader trends are just as alarming. A 2022 report by the World Wide Fund for Nature showed an average decline of 69% in species populations since 1970, with the biggest losses being in forests and other ecosystems, which provide immense value to industries such as food and agriculture, consumer goods and pharmaceuticals.
More than half of global GDP – an estimated $44 trillion of economic value, according to the World Economic Forum – is generated in industries that are moderately or highly dependent on nature.
The TNFD, comprised of representatives from 40 leading companies and financial firms, developed the guidance at lightning speed over the past two years, with extensive input from the businesses, policymakers, scientists, nonprofit organizations and civil society.
The recommendations are modeled after climate disclosure guidelines developed by a separate task force in 2017, and are consistent with global sustainability standards of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), as well as the impact materiality approach used by the Global Reporting Initiative. They also align with Target 15 reporting requirements under the Global Biodiversity Framework approved last December in Montreal.
Like the climate disclosure guidelines, which are now widely used by global businesses, nature-focused reporting is seen as a key first step in marshaling business action away from nature-damaging activities towards nature-positive solutions. For example, as investors are made aware of nature-related risks a company is facing, they may choose to support another company that is supporting nature-positive solutions such as regenerative agriculture.
But how much and how quickly can voluntary nature-based disclosure deliver?
The most immediate question is business interest – or the lack of it. Only 5% of the nearly 400 companies analyzed last year by the World Benchmarking Alliance understood their impact on nature; fewer than 1% knew how much their operations depended on nature....
....MUCH MORE
Previouly:
September 3
"Technocrats Won’t Solve the Climate Crisis" (but will make a ton of money in the attempt)
This is happening right now and it is big, big money. Come get you some....
And from September 2022 a heads-up on what was just around the corner:
Big Money Financial Engineering: Saving The Planet By Securitizing EarthThis is happening right now and if you want in on the action you have to know the game is being played.
A couple posts from October 2021 set the stage:
- In Case You Missed It: "NYSE’s new investment vehicle—‘natural asset companies’—will tap into ESG fever"
- Using spatial finance for sustainable development
Which were followed by "What's The Ocean Worth: Putting A Price On Natural Assets"
And here's John Bellamy Foster, Editor of Monthly Review magazine and Professor at the University of Oregon being interviewed on this very topic.
From Monthly Review, July 12:
The capitalist solution to ‘save’ the planet: make it an asset class & sell it...
If your goal is to make yourself a trillionaire it's best to be playing in a quadrillion-dollar sandbox.
- "Securitising the sun (Or, how to monetise the Inflation Reduction Act’s renewable-energy tax breaks)
- Hey Kids! There's A Carbon Trading Platform Inside The Inflation Reduction Act
- Securitize The Earth: Oil Trader Mercuria Creates A "Nature-Based" Investment Platform
Yale Environment360, April 2023
Mongabay, November 2022
Biodiversity credit market must learn from carbon offset mistakes (commentary)
World Economic Forum, September 2022
Biodiversity Credits:
Unlocking Financial Markets for Nature-Positive Outcomes
