Ireland takes a lead role in the European Business and Nature Summit 2022
Business for Biodiversity Ireland (BFBI) was invited to participate in the organisation of this year’s in-person and semi-virtual European Business and Nature Summit (EBNS) which was held in Brussels from 18th-19th October 2022.
The Platform was responsible for developing and delivering three parallel sessions and the summit closing plenary. The summit was themed to reflect the recent framework as released by Business for Nature and other partners earlier this year. It was structured with three thematic blocks of parallel sessions, Assess, Commit and Transform. BFBI organised a session in each of these blocks.
ASSESS
SME Financing for Biodiversity
This session brought together speakers from the OECD, the Italian Sustainable Finance Forum (ItaSIF) and Middlesex University Business School.
Marija Kuzmanovic (OECD) described the state of play for SME Sustainable Finance, discussing the current drivers, constraints and policies and how these challenges are replicated in biodiversity financing.
Isabel Reuss (ItaSIF) talked about funding biodiversity in the Italian context and how we have applied the lessons learned from green bonds to biodiversity financing.
Professor Fergus Lyon (Middlesex University Business School) discussed their ongoing research into how to build nature measurement and impacts into SME financing.
COMMIT
Finding a common language:
Translating biodiversity targets into KPIs for business and finance
This panel comprised experts looking at KPIs from different perspectives.
Two SMEs, Nature Metrics (Dr Sam Lacey) and BeeOdiversity (Michael van Cutsem), who specialise in gathering ecosystem data and metrics discussed their methodology, the value of the data they gather, and how these data can be used to design KPIs.
We had a perspective from the finance world and Benoit van den Hove (EuroNext) on how the creation of a biodiversity index can help bring nature into financial decision-making.
Finally, Valerio Scartezzini (Etifor) described how their methodology helps SMEs to create their own metrics using the MARC system.
TRANSFORM
The vital role of nature-based solutions in a nature-positive economy
Daniela Rizzi (ICLEI) opened this discussion with insights from the recently published paper with the same name.
This was followed by David Young (Broadway Initiative) discussing the importance of delivering high integrity markets to scale up nature-based solutions.
We had the perspective of a global financial institution from Sébastien Soleille (BNP Paribas) who talked about the concrete actions they are taking such as asking their clients for full traceability of biodiversity impacts in their supply chain by 2025.
A perspective of global Big Food from Owen Bethell (Nestlé) described how nature-based solutions (NbS) have influenced their supply chain and how NbS have complemented the work they are doing on climate change. He also highlighted the importance of social justice and the need to address these issues simultaneously.
Summit Closing Plenary
Katherine Tubb (Scotland: The Big Picture) took us on a visual journey to show what can be achieved when rewilding projects are properly resourced and highlighted the power of partnership.
Mieke Siebers (Foundation for Sustainable Development) finished with an inspiring speech asking how we can turn these targets into triumphs, what does that look like and how can we as individuals make that happen.
Key Takeaways
Woven into each thematic session and the plenaries was the need for transparency and disclosure. The need for mandatory disclosure of businesses impacts and dependencies on nature was highlighted throughout the summit, with particular reference to this being hugely important in terms of COP15 and the need for it to be included in the final actions of the Global Biodiversity Framework.
We look forward to following the discussion to Montreal in December!
