Investors around the world are increasingly scrutinising corporate directors’ governance and management of nature-related risks. In this Insights, we talk to Rachel Crossley, Head of Stewardship, Europe at BNP Paribas Asset Management (BNPP AM) about BNPP AM’s expectations of boards regarding their management of nature-related impacts and risks, disclosures, and why it is so important that they manage these impacts and risks effectively. Rachel leads BNPP AM’s stewardship activities in Europe, which includes engaging with companies, voting at their annual meetings and engaging with policymakers to help shape future laws and regulations to protect and restore nature.
Jasmin: Nature-related impacts and risks can have significant financial implications for businesses. Could you elaborate on how these risks can become financially material and why companies should consider assessing their dependences on nature and the associated risks?
Rachel: At BNPP AM, we characterise ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss as global systemic risks. The science is unequivocal, and the related economic analysis is robust. The latest edition of the Living Planet Index – published on October 10th this year as part of WWF’s biennial Living Planet Report, subtitled ‘A System in Peril’, warned that the world is fast approaching dangerous irreversible tipping points. These include the potential collapse of the Amazon rainforest and the rapid melting of polar ice, both of which help regulate the planet’s climate and sustain a wide range of life. Passing these tipping points, the report warns, would “pose grave threats to humanity and most species, and would damage Earth’s life-support systems and destabilise societies everywhere”.
A 2020 World Economic Forum report found that ecosystem services underpin the global economy: 55% of global GDP is moderately or highly dependent on nature and ecosystem services. Pollination, water quality and disease control are three examples of those services. This translates into US$44 trillion of economic value generation being exposed to risks from nature loss. The value of nature is only now beginning to be understood by companies and investors; damage inflicted on nature has always been treated as an ‘externality’ in economic systems – unvalued and unaccounted for, in financial terms.
It is therefore imperative that companies and all investors face up to the severity of the risks that biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse pose: according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2024, it one of the top three global risks by severity and one that is likely to accelerate the fastest in the next ten years.
As an asset manager with a broad range of clients who all depend upon a stable biosphere, we have the dual responsibility of understanding how our investments impact nature – our role in driving this crisis – and understanding how nature loss may translate into financial risks for individual companies and for our portfolios as a whole. Loss of ecosystem services can adversely affect a firm’s operation in various ways, mainly through disrupting access to raw materials and production processes. This can increase costs, reduce turnover and/or profits, and, in turn, returns to shareholders.
The eight sectors that have the biggest impacts and dependencies on nature, according to Nature Action 100, are: food production, retail, metals and mining, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, forestry and paper products, and household and personal goods. These are the sectors we will therefore be focusing on most.
Jasmin: From an investor’s standpoint, what are the expectations of boards in managing nature-related risks?
Rachel: The Board of Directors’ primary role is to ensure that companies deliver long-term sustainable value, meaning value that can be sustained over the long term, in balance with the interests of society and the environment.
We expect Boards first to develop a strong understanding of the dependencies and impacts of the business on nature across its entire value chain. They then need to understand the extent to which the company is exposed to three types of risks that these impacts and wider nature loss poses, and quantify these risks. They are:
- Physical risk—posed by acute events or chronic incremental changes resulting from the loss of ecosystem services on which the company depends.
- Transition risk—posed by changes in nature-related policies or regulation, market prices and preferences, competing technologies or the company’s reputation.
- Systemic risk—posed by the disruption to the wider natural or economic systems in which the company is operating.
The Board then needs to approve the company’s ambition in relation to nature; the corollary to setting a Net Zero by 2050 ambition, for example. It then needs to approve time-bound, context-specific, science-based targets – aligned to the goals of the Global Biodiversity Framework – to reduce the company’s impacts on nature and ameliorate the specific risks it faces and a plan to meet these targets. We will be urging companies to adopt Science-Based Targets for Nature. The Board also has a duty to ensure that sufficient capital and operational expenditure has been allocated to deliver the plan.
It is also critical that the Board considers whether and how to update its climate commitments considering the new information about nature-related risks and opportunities. The company, might, for example, realise that investing in nature restoration programmes can help to deliver both its climate AND nature goals simultaneously.
We also urge Boards to embed metrics within executives’ remuneration plans that align to the delivery of these targets and plans. As with all sustainability issues, it is important that the Board ensures the business is consulting and taking into account the views and needs of stakeholders; indigenous peoples and local communities can be particularly important in this context. Another role of the Board is to ensure that the company’s lobbying – direct or indirect, i.e., through its industry associations – does not undermine its ability to achieve is own goals and does not seek to delay, weaken or kill proposed government policy measures designed to protect nature and maintain ecosystem services.
In terms of how the Board is organised, we expect to see members receive expert training to ensure that they can deliver on these responsibilities. We also expect to see biodiversity feature regularly on the Board agenda, and that this topic is introduced into the scope of the appropriate Board committees.
Jasmin: How important are disclosures of nature-related risks, and how do they influence investment decisions?
Rachel: Disclosure is absolutely critical for investors, particularly quantitative data on sustainability topics. We are data fiends – data drives everything we do. That said, the accompanying narrative is also very important. We need both data on companies’ impacts on nature and clear descriptions of their plans and policies to address those impacts. This information enables us to understand their risk profile and incorporate that into our ESG and sustainability rating systems for equities and bonds. These ratings are core to how we determine which types of funds companies qualify for. In the European nomenclature, this means whether they are suitable for Article 9, Article 8 or Article 6 funds. The ESG rating can also determine how much we invest in a company, and whether we overweight it or underweight it in relation to the fund’s financial benchmark.
This is why we advocate for mandatory disclosure across all jurisdictions of companies’ impacts on and risks related to all sustainability issues; as a global investor, we need comprehensive, consistent data from all companies to do comparative analysis and properly allocate our clients’ capital.
The narrative in annual reports should provide us with an understanding of how well nature-related issues are understood, how risks are being addressed, how the business model and strategy are being revised to take account of nature-related challenges and opportunities, and progress against targets.
Jasmin: Through BNPP AM’s engagement with various companies, what are some of the common challenges they face concerning biodiversity and nature risks? How are these issues being addressed, and what best practices have emerged?
Rachel: One of the challenges for companies is developing sufficient knowledge across the business and at Board level on nature, on top of doing this in relation to climate change, human rights and other sustainability issues. Boards need to ensure that sufficient resources are being allocated across all business functions to facilitate the rapid learning that is needed; it is very important that this happens company-wide and is not simply seen as the role of a central sustainability function.
Another substantial challenge is collecting nature-related data.Many companies’ supply chains are extensive and complex; they typically have production sites around the world that rely on a large number and diverse range of raw materials and inputs, and they ship their products globally. Moreover, methodologies to identify and measure corporate impacts and dependencies on nature are to a large extent in their infancy; as most ecosystems are highly local in nature, data collection needs to be specific to those sites. Determining the impact of a UK mining company’s mine in Chile is very different to understanding that of beef suppliers in Ireland to a British food retailer and different again from understanding how precarious a pharmaceutical company’s dependence on marine animals is.
The technologies for measuring these impacts and dependencies range from using satellite data to trying to sample and test the DNA of species in specific operational sites, and everything in between. There is a lot of information available to Boards about the types of technologies available and a lot of specialist consultancies that companies can draw on. It is important that they do so.
We also believe it is important for companies to join multi-stakeholder initiatives focused on nature to learn about the issues and connect with other companies and stakeholders trying to understand and tackle similar issues.
They should also follow guidance such as that developed by the Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD). We expect that in time the TNFD will provide the default corporate reporting framework for nature loss, much as the TCFD has done for climate. In the meantime, we expect companies to provide thorough responses to the annual CDP survey on climate, forests and water, use the Accountability Framework Initiative reporting guidance for forests, and include a discussion of their response to the biodiversity crisis in their annual reporting.