First update of our Collaborative Engagements Overview
9 December 2022 – The Finance for Biodiversity Foundation and F@B Community have published the first update of the Collaborative Engagements Overview, which acts as an annex to the Guide on Engagement with Companies. Five new biodiversity-related collaborative engagements have been added.
Guide and overview
The Guide on Engagement with Companies and the accompanying Collaborative Engagements Overview were launched in April 2022. The guide contains a wealth of information for financial institutions on how to engage with companies on biodiversity topics. Annex 3 to the guide, the Collaborative Engagements Overview, provides a comprehensive overview of ongoing and past biodiversity-related collaborative engagements, including both collective engagements and joint investor letters.
Update of the overview
In this first update of the Collaborative Engagements Overview, the status (ongoing/completed) of all engagements was checked, and five new engagements were added:
- FAIRR: Biodiversity Loss from Waste & Pollution
- Ceres: Valuing Water Finance Initiative;Valuing Water Finance Taskforce
- Aviva, Storebrand AM, ChemSec: Investor Initiative on Hazardous Chemicals
- Finance and Deforestation Advisory Group: Finance Sector Deforestation Action
- Ceres: Food Emissions 50
The Collaborative Engagements Overview now includes information about 34 collective engagements and joint investor letters, of which 16 are currently ongoing. It thus points financial institutions to ongoing engagements that they can join, as well as directs them to information generated by past collaborative engagements.
Corporate engagement
Engaging with companies on biodiversity is one of the ways in which financial institutions can act to reverse nature loss. It is one of the five commitments in the Finance for Biodiversity Pledge, and it has a dedicated working group under the Finance for Biodiversity Foundation. Given that the biodiversity footprint of financial institutions is largely caused by the companies they invest in, corporate engagement is key for reversing nature loss. It is encouraging to see that financial institutions are taking up this task collectively by developing new collaborative engagements on biodiversity.
Nature Action 100
Seven members of the Engagement with Companies working group are also highly involved in a new large collaborative engagement initiative that is underway, Nature Action 100. The Finance for Biodiversity Foundation has supported the Launching Investor Group in scoping the programme and selecting partners for establishing and running it. A soft launch of this new initiative will take place during the UN CBD COP15 in Montreal, on December 11th.
Regular updates
By providing regular updates to the Collaborative Engagements Overview, the Finance for Biodiversity Foundation and the F@B Community want to help financial institutions to navigate the ever-changing landscape of collaborative biodiversity engagements. Feedback and input to be included in the next updates of this document can be sent to info@financeforbiodiversity.org.
Read the Collaborative Engagements Overview (Annex 3)
Read the Guide on Engagement with Companies