Greentech Alliance’s Industry Spotlight Series highlights members across all sectors represented in our community, with the aim of bringing great awareness to the sustainability challenges of the current and future generations. The first blog in the series – launched on World Environment Day – spotlights companies focused on biodiversity and conservation.
Did you know that there’s often more biodiversity in road verges than in many agricultural fields? Or that higher plant diversity equates to greater carbon sequestration in soil? Biodiversity is critical to healthy ecosystems—the interconnected communities upon which humans, plants, and animals rely for fresh air, water, and energy. Despite the importance of biodiversity to life on Earth, the planet loses over 4.7 million hectares of forest each year, rivers absorb over 80 percent of the world’s wastewater, and almost 90 percent of the planet’s wetlands has been lost over the past 300 years.
Later this year, countries will head to Kunming, China to finalize the targets in the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, known colloquially as the Paris Agreement for Nature. In light of the framework’s ambitious goal of ‘living in harmony with nature’ by 2050, we’ve reached out to Greentech Alliance members who’ve already been hard at work restoring biodiversity and conserving natural resources. From ecosystem and soil monitoring to reforestation and impact investing, they all shared a passion for Earth’s natural wonders.
We wanted to hear their thoughts on advancing the targets of the agreement in advance of World Environment Day on June 5, so we posed the question: “How can policymakers and investors push biodiversity and conservation to the forefront of the global agenda on climate action and planetary health?”
If you like what you see here and want to follow more Greentech Alliance content, subscribe to our newsletter for updates and follow us on LinkedIn.
Company: CECIL
Founders:Rory Oxenham & Alex Logan
Mission: Cecil is a platform for managing carbon and natural assets.
Rory and Alex on the imperative of investing in the climate/nature nexus: “The climate/nature nexus has never been clearer. In order to reach global climate goals, the world must invest in nature. This is because restoring the world’s natural ecosystems is the most cost-effective and scalable way to fight both climate and nature crises. The UN and World Economic Forum argue that global investment in nature needs to reach US $536 billion per year by 2050 (currently this figure is US $133 billion per year). Nature-positive policies, practices, and investments will be key to closing this financing gap. Businesses are quickly recognizing that beyond climate-related risk, their exposure to nature loss is material and growing. We’re excited by the developments in nature-risk reporting (for example, the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures) and the opportunities this creates in scaling natural capital markets. As demand for nature-related risk mitigation increases, so does demand for investment into natural capital assets that support a variety of ecosystem services (beyond carbon) and restore biodiversity. For both the public and private sectors, investing in nature is becoming one of the most compelling investment options.”
COMPANY:EcoTree
Co-Founders:Thomas Canguilhem & Erwan Le Méne
Mission: EcoTree rewards businesses and individuals with a simple, ground-breaking solution that builds biodiversity and supports sustainable forestry in Europe.
Thomas on not seeking the miracle solution: “As we've seen in the fight against climate change (another equally critical environmental challenge!), policymakers and investors probably shouldn't be looking for the perfect miraculous solution, but rather should be ready to engage in and support a multitude of initiatives, from which many will probably fail, but some will eventually succeed and have a much-needed impact! In this regard, startups and entrepreneurs should definitely be encouraged to unleash their potential, as they have shown in recent history that they may be the solution-makers of the future.”
Company: Endangered Wildlife
Founder & CEO: Shana Gavron
Mission: Endangered Wildlife OÜ is an award-winning ESG SaaS company that is contributing towards solving the climate crisis by using technology to demonstrate the financial value of biodiversity.
Shana on 3 ways to advance biodiversity in the global agenda: “It’s key for policymakers and investors to recognize three vital points. First, biodiversity needs to be integrated into decisions rather than be separated from human activity. Biodiversity can survive without humanity, but humanity cannot survive without biodiversity. Second, biodiversity needs to be understood in a universal language that doesn’t require re-education of stakeholders. This is why we, as a company, focus on financial valuations that make biodiversity understandable and relatable to all people. Third, the private sector needs to accept responsibility for biodiversity and acknowledge that biodiversity offers more than carbon and ecosystem services to humanity. These points need to be communicated within the climate action and planetary health dialogue.”
Mission: Kanop enables forest carbon project developers to measure and certify their climate impact by using satellite images images and state-of-the-art AI models.
Romain and Louis on linking biodiversity to economic and societal health: Improving the visibility of the benefits of biodiversity and ecosystem services to economies and society is key to paving the way for more efficient policy responses.
Company: KrattworkS
Co-Founders: Mattias Luha & Tõnis Voitka
Mission: KrattWorks helps firefighters stop landscape fires before they escalate out of control and set back global greenhouse gas emissions by one percent.
Mattias and Tõnis on putting money and action behind sentiment: “Standing up for the environment tends to be in conflict with (short-term) business interests calling for a “sensible approach.” It’s likewise accompanied by a chorus of disapproval by a small but vocal minority seduced by climate hoax theories. It does not help either that people favor actions to mitigate climate change in the abstract, but very few are willing to take actions themselves to reduce their personal footprint. For policy makers the situation resembles a political suicide - and we can’t really blame them. Standing up for the environment requires bravery and statesmanship. For investors, I would recommend thinking about the anonymity of money and why “big business” delivers ever-increasing ecological footprints and negative socio-economic impacts. If you place your investments in a fund maximizing profits, then in effect you buy the above-mentioned consequences with your money.”
Company: Sacred Groves
Co-Founders: Monisha & Vikram KrishnA
Mission: Sacred Groves secures natural habitats through direct acquisition or long-term contracts with landowners and governments, maps them using geospatial imaging, and converts them using advanced analytics into virtual Sacred Groves Clusters available for purchase on the web or mobile application.
Monisha and Vikram on the urgency of habitat preservation: “We must all realize that the impact of biodiversity and habitat loss will affect everyone negatively. The truth is that the exploitation of natural resources has front-loaded benefits and back-loaded costs. For example, when a forest is cut, the economic benefits are immediate with the sale of forest produce, but the long-term costs of changing weather patterns, groundwater levels, and drops in agriculture production are immeasurable! Recognizing and incorporating this reality into our current socio-economic and political mechanisms is an urgent need of the hour. While the UN SDGs and COP agenda aim to accelerate action, the reality is that we continue to lose a soccer field equivalent of primary forests every six seconds in the guise of progress.”
Company:Selva
Co-Founders:Harry Hely-Hutchinson and Filadelfo Braz
Mission: Selva enables individuals to calculate and offset their carbon footprint through a monthly subscription to reforestation projects.
Harry and Filadelfo on scaling nature-based solutions: “The first stage is simply understanding and appreciating the potential scale of nature-based solutions. They aren't a nice-to-have in the buffet of solutions that we need to deploy; they’re the centerpiece of an effective net-zero pathway. Photosynthesis is a technology that has been developed over the past 3.2 billion years and, unsurprisingly after so much time for R&D, it is extremely effective at absorbing CO2. Certainly far better than anything we have come up with! Let's not let the sexier, cutting edge, but unproved, technologies distract us from those that we know to work.”
Company:Symbiose Management
Founder & CEO: Marwen Nefati
Mission: Symbiose Management is a fintech company empowering people to address climate change from the bottom-up by providing them with the first CO2-negative investment product based on tree plantations near the investors.
Marwen on changing accounting rules to account for biodiversity impact: Pushing for changes in accounting rules in order to put biodiversity impact on the same level as financial metrics like Earnings Per Share (EPS) could be one solution. Obviously, policymakers need to incentivize such a boost in transparency alongside some fiscal reductions so more corporations pivot toward this level of transparency.