Collaborating on biodiversity for better informed business decisions

The financial sector, together with the business community, has significant opportunities to help counteract the ongoing loss of biodiversity. Since 2022, Swedish Export Credit Corporation (SEK) has been a partner in the Mistra BIOPATH research programme to better understand how the businesses SEK finances are dependent on nature.

Nature and biodiversity have intrinsic value beyond the ecosystem services they produce—services that humans depend on to survive, such as access to food and water. Research increasingly shows that the rapid loss of biodiversity poses a threat at least as serious as climate change. However, the consequences of these losses are still relatively unknown. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly important for businesses and the financial sector to understand and reduce their negative impacts, as well as to foster collaboration between the financial sector, industry, and academia.

SEK collaborates with Mistra BIOPATH

To enhance insights on how financiers like SEK can better integrate biodiversity into financial decision-making, SEK participates in the Mistra BIOPATH research program.

“How we in the financial sector should understand and address nature-related risks and opportunities is critical, both for making well-informed business decisions and for minimizing negative impacts as much as possible. The collaboration with an organization like Mistra BIOPATH provides us and other companies with a solid scientific foundation in this regard,” says Maria Simonson, Acting Head of Client Relations and Head of Sustainability at SEK.

In the climate field, the goals set in the Paris Agreement guide the transition. Now that many governments, including Sweden’s, have signed the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), it is important for both the financial sector and industry to understand how different sectors should act to contribute to biodiversity goals.

SEK lends to more than 60 countries and across a wide range of industries with global supply chains dependent on natural resources and other ecosystem services. The wide range of industries and countries in SEK’s lending portfolio makes it challenging to assess and understand the risks to biodiversity, as these risks are often specific to particular sectors and linked to specific geographic areas.

“A major challenge compared to the climate change will be establishing relevant goals. Greenhouse gas emissions can be measured in the same way regardless of location, but nature and biodiversity are much more complex to measure and vary significantly between geographic areas,” says Monica Edblad, Sustainability Strategist at SEK.

Pilot project with the LEAP method

A central part of the collaboration with Mistra BIOPATH involves testing the relevance and usability of various tools for financial actors. Viktor Elliot, research leader at Mistra BIOPATH, sees several advantages to collaborating with SEK.

“In research, it’s about problematizing and examining questions, while in practice, it’s about taking action. I think the collaboration with SEK has worked incredibly well in this regard. We have been able to learn from each other quickly. Together, we can make rapid progress,” he says.

SEK, in collaboration with the researchers, has conducted a pilot project to map and analyze its lending portfolio using the LEAP method, a framework developed by the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD). The conclusions from the pilot study are currently being compiled, and the next step is to plan which activities to carry out in 2025 based on these findings.

About TNFD, LEAP, and GBF

The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) is an international framework for financial reporting related to biodiversity. LEAP (which stands for Locate, Evaluate, Assess, and Prepare) is a model that provides a foundation for meeting TNFD’s reporting requirements. TNFD is designed to align with the global goals in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), which was adopted at the United Nations biodiversity conference in December 2022.

This is an article from SEK. Please read more about SEK and this text in Swedish at www.sek.se