Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which manages Norway’s giant sovereign wealth fund, announced today it is joining the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) as a taskforce member.
This makes NBIM the 34th member of the market-led initiative to create a framework for reporting and action on nature-related risks, which was officially launched in June this year.
Carine Smith Ihenacho, chief governance and compliance officer at the Oslo-based manager of the NOK12.3trn (€1.2trn) Government Pension Fund Global, said: “As an investor, we recognise that biodiversity loss and deterioration of natural ecosystems can impact our long-term returns.”
But while the financial relevance of nature loss was increasingly clear, she said, the underlying information needed to identify and manage nature-related risks was often not available or useful for decision making.
“Companies need a robust framework to understand and report their dependency and impact on nature, and to handle the associated challenges and opportunities,” Smith Ihenacho said.
“By supporting the work of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, we look forward to taking part in developing such a solution,” she said.
On launch, the TNFD’s proposed goal was stated as the provision of a framework for non-financial corporates and financial institutions to report and act on evolving nature-related risks, in order to support a shift in global financial flows away from nature-negative outcomes and toward nature-positive outcomes.
That framework is scheduled to be released in late 2023 in its final version, though a beta framework is set to be launched in early 2022.
At the end of September, the taskforce announced that 30 members from financial institutions, corporates and service providers had been appointed.
NBIM’s representative is Snorre Gjerde, senior sustainability analyst.
So far, the only other pension fund representative on the panel is Johan Florén, head of ESG and communications at Sweden’s AP7. Thirteen other financial-sector institutions are members of the taskforce, including AXA, BlackRock and HSBC.
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