BIODIVERSITY Day

Financial actors and academia join forces to build back biodiversity

Today is International Biodiversity Day! This year with the theme “From agreement to action: build back biodiversity”, and for us, that is a good reason to highlight the potential of the finance sector in reviving biodiversity

In December 2022, the World agreed on a landmark roadmap to protect and restore biodiversity. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework was widely received as a success. However, it remains unclear how to achieve the ambitious goals of the agreement, including the target to protect 30 per cent of the Earth’s surface by 2030.

One key role is going to fall on financial actors.

“Biodiversity loss is unravelling the web of life that supports all people, societies, and economies – including the financial system. This loss is driven by our global economy which is steered by finance”, says Centre researcher Garry Peterson.

Garry Peterson leads a Mistra-funded programme called FinBio - Finance to Revive Biodiversity with the aim to provide cutting-edge research to connect the financial system and biodiversity.

A connection is needed in two ways: The programme sets out with the goal of ‘greening finance and financing green’.

On one hand, it’s about taking stock of and reducing environmental impacts of investments. On the other, it’s about identifying business models that safeguard existing biodiversity.

“In FinBio we want to support the financial sector to start enhancing the resilience of our planet by reversing the loss of nature and biodiversity,” explains Garry Peterson.

To do this, the programme gathers a consortium of top scholars in a range of fields from economics to biodiversity science and even philosophy. The team of researchers also works together with strategic impact partners that can help translate research outputs into the real world.

“Our impact strategy is based on a systems view of the financial sector – we recognize that different participants have different roles to play. Our impact partners have been carefully selected to help us translate our research outputs into real-world financial impact and drive change across a significant portion of the financial services industry,” says Beatrice Crona, Centre researcher and senior scientific advisor with FinBio.

FinBio is hosted by Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, and brings together experts from different academic fields as well as strategic impact partners that can help translate research outputs into real-world financial impact.