S&P Global Sustainable1 has launched Nature & Biodiversity Risk, a new dataset assessing nature-related impacts and dependencies across a company’s direct operations that can be applied at the asset, company and portfolio level.
This new dataset will support companies, investors and entities as they seek to understand, manage and mitigate exposure of corporates and portfolios to nature related risks and impacts.
The data set, which covers over 17,000 companies and 1.6 million assets, includes several new nature-related risk metrics including a dependency score and ecosystem footprint measure.
This enables greater understanding of a company or asset’s dependency and impact on nature.”
More specifically, the dependency score looks at a company’s reliance across 21 ecosystem services and the risks those ecosystems face.
It said the ecosystem footprint considers a company’s impact on nature and biodiversity, including land use, the effect on an ecosystem and how locally significant that ecosystem is.
Nearly half or 46% of the largest companies globally have “at least one key asset” that is located within key biodiversity areas, and those assets “could be exposed to future reputational and regulatory risks,” the firm stated.
The newly available data rely on a methodology that S&P and the UN Environment Programme launched together in January, called Nature Risk Profile.
An early finding S&P made using the dataset is that 85% of the largest companies globally “have a significant dependency on nature across their direct operations.”
“From the launch of the Taskforce on Nature Related Financial Disclosures in 2021 to the significant commitments made at COP15, there is an increasing demand from companies and investors to be able to quantify both their dependency on nature and the impact of their operations on location-specific ecosystems,” says Thomas Yagel, chief operating and product officer at S&P Global Sustainable.
Markets Media Europe 2023
