Getting to that 2030 biodiversity target

I am not in Geneva this week. Not because I don’t want to be there for all the incredibly urgent reasons, or catch up with old friends and colleagues, or to make new relationships and collaborations … but because life means I can’t get there this week.

But my team and I are busy-busy trying to solve a number of conundrums and practical challenges with our corporate and finance sector partners. These conundrums and practical challenges are, ultimately, about two things. Delivery on commitments (to nature and nature positive) and biodiversity data.?Not an old story, and certainly not one you aren’t all trying to take on, too.?Who needs what, how and in what format? How do we turn the theoretical into practical and achievable? How do we make this all accessible and urgent and delivered??How do we generate enough momentum in markets and assurance to incentivise and cajole and entice and capture nature-centric decision-making and nature-positive outcomes? Where are the projects and what are those nature-positive businesses?

I am deeply impressed by the dedicated work of those taking forward the @TNFD and hugely grateful for the amazing voice and coordination and impetus drive by @Business for Nature, the @Capitals Coalition and @WBCSD.?Tomorrow I will spend the day with key folk from @Citi and @Cambridge Conservation Initiative to talk about biodiversity data. What data does a banker need to invest wisely in nature positive portfolios? How will we know the financing is delivering real conservation outcomes in real projects with real people?

We know what the pressures are on nature. We know, in most part, what interventions are needed to respond to these pressures. What do we – you, me and our futures … a complex array of stakeholders invested in and dependent on nature – need as evidence that we are doing something material about our impacts and dependencies on nature? ?Who do we need to impress? Who do we need to convince? What is our “business case” (I’m not going down that path as it is all to obvious now)??Who are we accountable to?

Quite simply, this is where I think we should be focusing in a pressure-state-response model relating to natural capital:

·??????Pressure - remote sensing (deltas), real time tracking with fancy new conservation tech (deltas), markets analyses (sourcing of natural capital and ecosystem services), provenance of raw material supply chains (same)

o??Maps … in real time telling us where those big red pressure points are and WHERE we need to act (that image… a landscape in Kono County, Sierra Leone …right now)

o??Links … between money, consumers and natural capital

·??????State – real-time and serial remote sensing + conservation spatial analytics to determine ecological health and function, eDNA tethered to actions and controls, composition and structure of ecosystems

o??More maps …

o??Real data looking NOT only at redlist species but at ecosystem health and function at a local landscape scale … water basins, functional ecological units, condition and intactness

·??????Response - corporate action on commitments, tracing investment to operations and through raw material supply chains, assurance and certification through chains of custody

o??SBTi … in transparent detail with materiality assessments from consumer to farm or mine or forest or watershed

o??Commodity traceability through value chains and nature at the heart of this

This is no small measure of need and it will require us to arm ourselves with the technical capacity to deliver on these things. It requires discipline and honesty and commitment. It requires thorough accounting and no short cuts. It requires scientists and ecologists, spatial analysis and data professionals, and environmental economists whose feet are solidly on the ground. It needs more than talk – it needs a lot of doing.

You may have seen four new roles advertised in the FFI corporate sustainability team this week. ?We want to really get hold of the TNFD Beta Framework and the SBTN and our own amazing capabilities within the team as architects of net positive impact and nature positive, and we really want to leverage the impact and influence we can have with YOU all … in collaborations and partnerships and in sharing the how with the delivery on the ground. We also have recruitments in nature-positive conservation enterprise and nature based solutions.

We need to keep the integrity of what we do at the heart of this all and with such fantastic momentum, I honestly believe the 2030 and 2050 goals will be achievable. They have to be.