Biodiversity foundation sets ambitious nature targets for investors

The Finance for Biodiversity (FfB) Foundation has published a set of revised nature targets for asset managers and asset owners, calling for a greater focus on nature-positive investing.

The second edition of the nature target framework acts as a guide to investors in setting targets to address impact drivers of nature change across their portfolios, reinforcing the urgent need to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.

Additionally, the framework includes initiation goals that aim to enable investors to analyse their exposure to nature-related impacts, dependencies, risks, and opportunities.

The interactions between asset managers and asset owners with nature are born primarily through their asset allocation and investment decisions, the FfB said.

As such, investors have a crucial role in redirecting financial flows away from nature-negative impacts towards positive outcomes for nature goals of the Kunming-Montreal Agreement and has been developed in alignment with key initiatives on nature and climate change, including the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), Science Based Targets Network (SBTN), and the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), among others.

“Setting targets is one of the five commitments under the FfB Pledge. This is not a prescriptive methodology that investors must fully adhere to. The final scope and structure of targets are left to the discretion of each investor,” the report stated.

As the FfB focuses on asset managers and asset owners, the framework is not applicable to banks. As such, the group encouraged banks to look at the PRB Target Setting Guidance of the UNEP FI for assistance in establishing nature targets.

Other key updates in the edition include:

• Unified Approach: The revised framework replaces the concept of beginner and advanced tracks with a unified approach, ensuring that all targets are geared towards being achieved by 2030, in alignment with the Global Biodiversity Framework.
• Impact Drivers Identification: The framework identifies three impact drivers on nature that are material for the 10 priority sectors and for which there is already available data: land use change, volume of water use, and emission of toxic soil and water pollution.

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