A UK research and innovation programme has allocated £3 million to launch a network aimed at hastening the integration of biodiversity into the financial system.
The Integrating Finance and Biodiversity (IFB) programme, led by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the national agency Innovate UK, will establish a team of researchers and finance practitioners tasked with connecting with the public, private, and third sectors.
Under the initiative, this multi-stakeholder community will seek to build knowledge and tools to foster resource mobilisation for biodiversity conservation and restoration, as well as enhance access to data for nature-related disclosures.
“Our vision is to build national capability bridging scientific, finance, policy, and third-sector communities, harnessing and catalysing world-leading science to enable the greening of finance for nature,” said Nick Wells, principal investigator of the network.
The IFB programme, which received a total of £7 mln from NERC and Innovation UK, launched in April last year with 12 pilot projects and has engaged with 250 organisations so far.
It includes three flagship initiatives aimed at:
- Bolstering nature restoration in the agricultural sector
- Delivering investment in ecosystem and species conservation
- Incorporating biodiversity impacts in financial decision-making
The next phase of the programme will kickstart with a closed-door forum for the latter initiative, Greening Finance for Nature, on Mar. 21.
Hosted by the Environmental Change Institute (ECI), it will bring together representatives from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the World Bank, and the Taskforce on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), among others.
“Over half of global GDP is dependent on nature, yet we are seeing unprecedented biodiversity declines due to human activities,” said Nicola Ranger, co-director of the IFB programme and lead of its Greening Finance for Nature initiative.
“Financial institutions can play an important role in securing a nature-positive future. Our goal is to revolutionise financial decision-making by incorporating nature within it. This will be driven by scientific data and guidance, and new regulatory frameworks.”
BRIDGING THE GAP
Closing the biodiversity financing gap is regarded as one of the top priorities for meeting the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) target to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030.
The UN Environment Programme estimated that harmful funding to nature amounts to $7 trillion per year, whereas funding with a positive impact in 2022 reached only $200 billion.
The UK alone should increase funding towards biodiversity by at least £44 bln, according to a separate study.
“To close the financing gap for nature and biodiversity protection and recovery, businesses and financial institutions need to begin to measure and disclose their impacts on nature and their dependencies on the many vital services that nature provides,” said Emily McKenzie, technical director of the TNFD.
“Companies and financial institutions urgently need to be able to access robust data, models, and tools to assess their nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities.”
While TNFD provides organisations with nature-related data required to apply the framework, financial institutions often deem the lack of data a critical barrier to assessing their risks and dependencies on nature across the upstream and downstream value chain.
“Integrating finance and biodiversity … will play an important role in filling the data and knowledge gaps, and help accelerate progress,” said McKenzie.
By Sergio Colombo – sergio@carbon-pulse.com
** Click here to sign up to our twice-weekly biodiversity newsletter **
