Human prosperity has improved more in the past 30 years than all of the past centuries combined.

However, this has been at the expense of animal and plant species.

Putting an end to this unsustainable relationship demands a deeper understanding of biodiversity im-pact on human wellbeing, with policy makers now considering its protection as important as halting global warming.

As a steward of global capital, the financial industry, too, must play a more active role. It can facilitate a nature-positive transition, by transforming the way it allocates capital and developing new models to price biodiversity risks and opportunities more accurately.

By finding a way to attach a value to the ecosystem services we currently receive for free, a genuinely sustainable economy is within reach. Investors also need to be cognisant of biodiversity-related taxes, permits and offsets likely to be introduced by policy makers.

Therefore, by understanding different threats biodiversity loss poses to businesses, they can begin to correctly price such risks, identify gaps in the current environmental, social and governance (ESG) framework and discover new ways to invest in natural capital.

By developing a thriving natural capital market, investors can help shift capital flows away from busi-nesses and projects that degrade the natural environment and towards regenerative initiatives.

Nature has always been the economy’s most important asset. It is time the finance industry recognised that.

Share Story: