Investments & Pensions Europe (January Issue)
“Biodiversity is fast catching up with climate change as a priority for investors and supervisors, and developments last year have set the stage for a productive 2023…. Barely a topic of conversation in financial markets two years ago,” biodiversity now “has an investment ecosystem all of its own, which is being built on the back of a decade of lessons learnt in the climate finance space. From global agreements, supervisory interventions and standardised reporting guidelines through to data, investment products and a collaborative engagement initiative, the pieces are quickly falling into place to ensure the private sector knows what it’s meant to do to manage nature-related risks in 2023 and beyond.”
Tags: 2023, Biodiversity, Climate change, Collaborative engagement, Financial markets, Investment ecosystem, Investors, Nature-related risks, Priority, Private-sector, Reporting guidelines
Investment & Pensions Europe (December 23)
“After seeming to hit a wall last week, negotiations” at COP15 ultimately “yielded an agreement on biodiversity – in a move that some hope will make it easier for the finance sector to address nature-related risks to their portfolios.” Similar to the breakthrough Paris Agreement, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework “lays down a plan for dealing with the ecological crisis over coming years,” codifying a “commitment to ‘take action’ to conserve 30% of land, sea and freshwater sources by the end of the decade – known as the ‘30×30’ pledge.”
Tags: Biodiversity, Breakthrough, Commitment, COP15, Ecological crisis, Finance, Freshwater, Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, Land, Nature, Negotiations, Paris Agreement, Portfolios, Risks, Sea, Take action
BBC (January 18)
“The United Nations has identified three existential environmental threats – climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution – and concluded that they must be addressed together” through multilateral agreements. Now “more than 100 countries, including the UK” appear to support a dedicated plastics treaty that may be “proposed at the next UN Environment Assembly in February and March.”
Tags: Biodiversity, Climate change, Environmental, Existential, Multilateral agreements, Pollution, Support, Threats, UK, UN
New York Times (October 1)
“As species disappear and the complex relationships between living things and systems become frayed and broken, the growing damage to the world’s biodiversity presents dire risks to human societies.” We are living through “one of the most explosive extinction episodes in history” with plant and animal extinction occurring “an estimated 1,000 times faster than natural rates.” Our course is unsustainable. “It is much less costly to protect and conserve nature than it is to restore it or suffer the consequences of its destruction.”
Tags: Animal, Biodiversity, Complex, Consequences, Conserve, Damage, Destruction, Disappear, Extinction, Plant, Protect, Relationships, Restore, Risks, Species
New York Times (March 13)
“Civilization is at last turning green, albeit only pale green.” Our focus needs to shift toward preserving biodiversity, rather than merely protecting the physical environment. “The global conservation movement is like a surgeon in an emergency room treating an accident victim: He has slowed the bleeding by half. Congratulations, we might say—even though the patient will be dead by morning. Unless we wish to pauperize the natural world drastically and permanently,” we “must take more serious action to preserve the rest of life.”
