The investment industry has been focused on carbon reduction targets since the Paris Climate agreement was adopted in 2016. However, there is a dawning realisation that these climate targets simply cannot be met without addressing the ongoing biodiversity crisis. Natural environments are the most powerful global carbon sink and provide protection against the worst effects of global warming. Threatened ecosystem services also underpin roughly half of the world’s GDP, representing enormous risk to portfolio companies. Last year’s biodiversity-focused COP15 culminated in the Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework, a global agreement on nature that sets in motion a wide range of measures that will directly affect institutional investors in the form of new reporting obligations, new risks to monitor and manage, as well as potential investment opportunities in nature-based-solutions.

Given biodiversity’s fundamental link to the climate crisis, governments and regulators are scrambling to catch up. This means asset owners and managers must get ready to respond and adapt to these new risk factors, exposures, and opportunities. The big question is how and where to start? To answer this question, Swesif has the pleasure of inviting you to a webinar that will aim to put investors on the right track to navigate this new arena. With the help of three experts in the field, we will explore the following themes:

• What types of biodiversity and nature-related risks and exposures are typically found in institutional portfolios?
• What are the best tools and metrics currently available to measure a biodiversity “footprint” and map these new exposures?
• Nature-based engagement: how to obtain the right data from investee companies and begin tracking progress.
• A discussion on the advantages of pre-empting new biodiversity guidelines and regulations, as well as exploring potential investment opportunities in nature-based solutions.

The experts:

Anita de Horde
Co-Founding Executive Director, Finance for Biodiversity Foundation

Anita leads the overall coordination and activities of the Foundation. She has over 20 years of experience in sustainability and worked in the finance sector for banks, insurers, asset managers, and an impact investor. She initiated several commitments on climate change with the finance sector.

Samu Slotte
Biodiversity assessment of Danske Bank’s lending books

Samu is the Global Head of Sustainable Finance at Danske Bank, with the overall responsibility for ESG integration in Danske Bank’s Large Corporates and Institutions unit. His responsibilities include both the integration of ESG in credit assessments and customer portfolio steering as well as green and sustainability linked finance. Samu has been in his current role since 2018 and prior to that worked for more than 20 years in various roles in Debt Capital Markets.

Angelo Drei
Sustainable Investing Research at J.P. Morgan Asset Management

Prior to joining J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Angelo was a Quantitative Research Analyst at Amundi in Tokyo then Paris. Previously, he was a Visiting Researcher at the Department of Political Science of the University of California, Berkeley. He received his M.A. in Political Economy from Waseda University and his M.S. in Finance from Paris Dauphine University.