Work Streams

Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services

Biodiversity, defined as the wealth of genes, species, ecosystems and landscapes on Earth, provides businesses with a range of goods and services collectively termed ecosystem services. All sectors ultimately rely on common services such as the provision of clean water, the maintenance of fertile soils, and the regulation of climate, all of which are delivered by healthy ecosystems. Yet businesses contribute to ecosystem change.

Recent evidence reveals the dramatic loss of our natural assets and the degradation of the services they provide. For the private sector, these changes implicate complex new challenges. Operational, regulatory, and public risks are matched by opportunities emerging from the development of new technologies, new markets, and new business models.

Under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, governments worldwide have recently stepped up their commitment to involve the private sector in the development of the appropriate enabling regulatory framework to harness the power of markets in designing and implementing innovative solutions to the issue of the loss of biodiversity. The recognition that human, economic and natural well-being are inextricably linked aligns the objectives of financial institutions and their stakeholders and provides a constructive framework for action.

UNEP FI's Work

Aim

To assist the financial services sector in addressing the challenges arising from the loss of biodiversity and the degradation of ecosystem services.

The development of UNEP FI's work on biodiversity and ecosystem services comes partly as a response to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) CoP 8 decisions on private sector engagement which states that parties: "Invites businesses and relevant organizations and partnerships, such as the Finance Initiative of the United Nations Environment Programme, to develop and promote the business case for biodiversity……."

Objectives

Driven by a range of financial institutions and other key partners, including international environmental NGO Fauna & Flora International, the Workstream objectives are the following:

• Raise awareness on the business implications of loss or degradation of ecosystems and the services they provide
• Strengthen the business case for action and provide the financial sector with information and analysis tools for adequate management of ecosystem services
• Open dialogue between financial institutions (both public and private) and policy makers for identifying and acting on areas where the framework conditions under which business operates can be better aligned with ecosystems stewardship

Projects

• Bloom or Bust Report & CEO Briefing
  Bloom or Bust, a financial sector briefing on biodiversity & ecosystem services, analyses a wide array of financial linkages between banks and investors and various industry sectors by exploring the risks faced by financial institutions that as well as opportunities for financial products and services that support sustainable use of biodiversity & ecosystem services.
  • View the CEO Briefing
  • View the complete report
• The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity -- TEEB
  The TEEB study will be the biodiversity equivalent of the 'Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change', and will look at the economic significance of the global loss of biological diversity. In May 2008, an interim report of the study was presented at the 9th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, which was held in Bonn, Germany (see the report: www.unep.org/greeneconomy/docs/TEEB_English.pdf)
  The second phase of TEEB -- 'TEEB II' --- has commenced and will continue until 2010. It will build on the results of TEEB I and has the overarching aim of addressing the continued and rapid decline of biodiversity and degradation of ecosystems at the global level, as documented in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.
  The D3 report focuses on the business end-user and aims to encourage and enable the assessment of the impacts of business/production activities on biodiversity and ecosystems. D3 will include guidance on how to assess and manage the risks of biodiversity and economic loss in existing business sectors (e.g. reduced availability of key production inputs, risk to brand reputation). It also aims to help business leaders identify and seize new opportunities linked to conservation and sustainable use of biological resources (e.g. new market niches, entirely new industries, brand building).
  The UNEP FI Secretariat will be coordinating financial services sector contributions to the D3 component of TEEB II, which will be launched in October 2010 at the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, in Nagoya, Japan.
• Forest Footprint Disclosure project
  The Forest Footprint Disclosure Project (FFD Project) is a new UK government-supported initiative, created to help investors identify how an organisation’s activities and supply chains contribute to tropical deforestation, and link this 'forest footprint' to their value. Modelled on the successful Carbon Disclosure Project, it aims to create transparency and shed light on a key challenge within investor portfolios, where currently there is little quality information. Participating companies will gain a better understanding of their own environmental dependencies, and how the changing climate and new regulatory frameworks could affect access to resources and the cost of doing business in the long term.
  The disclosure information will be reported annually, enabling investors to identify the sustainable businesses of the future as well possible risks related to a company’s forest footprint. The FFD Steering Committee Members are: Carbon Disclosure Project, Fauna & Flora International, Global Canopy Programme, The Prince’s Rainforests Project, Strategic Environmental Consulting, UK Department for International Development and UNEP Finance Initiative.
• Biodiversity Offsets International Legislation Mapping
  The BES work stream is also working to initiate a project that will help lay the foundations for increased adoption of biodiversity offsetting principles worldwide as well as contribute towards improving legislative coordination and stakeholder dialogue.
  The focus of the project will be to identify and map the different national and global legislations in place with regards to biodiversity offsetting and to see which countries best allow / impose the application of offsetting principles (whether obligatory or voluntary), and use this as the basis for developing tools that facilitate an analysis of global business opportunities and risks relating to biodiversity offsets, It is hoped that this will allow the further development of biodiversity offset markets, that will, in turn, speed up broader progress in this area.
• The Natural Value Initiative
• Environmental & Social Responsibility Observatory

Members

Associate Members

Chair

Merrill Lynch

Events

• Valuing Natural Capital: Overcoming barriers to market valuation of biodiversity and ecosystem services in the private sector
  Panel discussion at the IUCN World Conservation Congress
  6 October 2008, Barcelona, Spain
• Second Workshop on the Natural Value Initiative, 3 September, 2007, Sao Paulo, Brazil
• First Workshop on the Natural Value Initiative, 8 August 2007, London
• First Workshop of Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services Work Stream, 5 April 2007, London
• Working session with a group of financial institutions co-convened with the World Resources Institute (WRI). 28 April 2006, New York, USA. Agenda - Background document - Presentation by Craig Hanson, WRI, on the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment
• UNEP FI recognized in the Convention on Biological Diversity decision on private sector engagement. CBD COP-8, March 2006, Curitiba, Brazil.
• Presentation at the seminar on private sector participation in the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity organized by the Brazilian Foundation for Sustainable Development (FBDS), 24 March 2006, Curitiba, Brazil.
• Panel event on finance and biodiversity "Protecting Shareholder and Natural Value", 21 March 2006, Curitiba, Brazil.

Contact

Susan Steinhagen
biodiversity [at] unepfi.org