Biodiversity loss now competes with climate change as the principal challenge for sustainable finance. However, this crisis has not been addressed with the same urgency by regulators, governments, corporations, or the financial sector. We believe that in 2022, efforts focused on climate change should extend to address the biodiversity challenge, since the two are interconnected. At the 2021 COP26 event, the declaration signed to save and restore our planet’s forests cements the importance of biodiversity as a twin crisis. Commitments from the public and private sectors to curb biodiversity, as well as the dependencies and impact of business sectors on nature, affirms to us that it must be factored into portfolios.
The challenge of biodiversity loss
Biodiversity—the variety of life on earth—is nature in all its forms and interactions. It therefore underpins the provision of ecosystem services and is an integral part of nature’s capital. Consequently, the state of the natural environment strongly influences the fate of our society. What’s key to understand is that the loss of ecosystem services is not only an environmental issue, but also an economic and social issue.
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