Into the wild: from nature to investment strategies

Today, the city of Metz, France, is hosting the meeting of the G7 Environment, gathering the Environment Ministers of the G7 countries. Thomas Buberl attended the event to share AXA’s ambition to become a leader in the protection of biodiversity.

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Species are disappearing at a fast rate, endangering ecosystemic services and threatening human integrity. The potential loss of key ecological services endangers populations, but also the businesses that depend on them.

We view the biodiversity challenge as a natural extension of our climate efforts. Indeed, climate change is severely compounding the destruction of ecosystems all around the world, adding pressures related to drought, ocean acidification, more intense natural catastrophes, etc.

This is why we decided to investigate how biodiversity loss is impacting society and how we can act both as an insurer and an investor.

Today, AXA’s CEO Thomas Buberl is co-presenting recommendations developed with the WWF emphasizing how biodiversity loss may be tackled by investors through new forms of public-private collaborations.

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Engaging in the fight for biodiversity: an absolute necessity

The report Into the Wild – Integrating nature into investment strategies is designed to raise awareness on biodiversity loss and its economic and financial impacts. It presents several recommendations, including the launch of a broad-based coalition: the Task Force on Nature Impact Disclosures. This taskforce should create the conditions to transition towards protection, restoration and promotion of biodiversity. Financial institutions have an important leadership role to play in supporting awareness and decision taking around biodiversity loss. Achieving meaningful change, however, will require a broad-based coalition gathering the full spectrum of actors that are part of the issue and of the solution. With this Task Force, we call for an open dialogue among private and public sectors, including policymakers, with the objective to promote cross sectorial and cross border engagement.

For further info and details regarding the recommendations, read the full report here.

AXA’s ambition beyond this new report

Beyond these future developments, AXA is engaged on biodiversity through research, action, and protection.

We are supporting fundamental academic research through the AXA Research Fund through a recently launched call for projects focused on marine biodiversity. We have already selected 8 postdocs. More information here.

We are also acting through investment, by announcing today the launch of our third Impact Investment fund, with a strong focus on biodiversity protection. This Impact Fund will invest between 150 and €200m of AXA capital to fund credible solutions that deliver intentional and measurable positive outcomes contributing to the fight against climate change and loss of biodiversity.

In addition, as an investor, we can nudge the companies we invest in to change their behavior. We have decided to support the Plastic Solutions Investor Alliance, a coalition of investors who collectively engage consumer goods companies on the threat posed by plastic waste and pollution.

Our insurance activities are also important for biodiversity protection.

We can design insurance products which help directly protect nature. AXA XL, our division dealing with specialty risks, proposes environmental liability covers insuring companies against accidental damages on the environment, and providing expertise and sizeable means to help protect ecosystems in case they occur. This allows for resilience of local communities affected.

Furthermore, we have joined the world’s first insurance industry statement on sustainable marine insurance, banning so-called illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. This statement, jointly developed by the UN Principles for Sustainable Insurance and Ocean, a large international ocean conservation and advocacy NGO, focuses on IUU fishing through education, awareness building, risk management, and insurance underwriting.

Last but not least, we are actively contributing to the Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance (ORRAA), an alliance focused on developing risk management strategies using the experience and expertise of the insurance and broader finance community, to address ocean risk and build resilience in the regions and communities that need it most. Find out more.