Getting involved
The first phase of the NVI is complete. During it, we developed the Ecosystem Services Benchmark (ESB) – a tool for investors to enable them to evaluate company approaches to impacts and dependence on biodiversity and ecosystem services.
The ESB was applied to 31 companies in the food, beverage and tobacco sectors. Our investor collaborators (Aviva Investments, F&C Investments, Grupo Santander Brasil, Pax World and Vic Super) are using our findings to inform their investment decisions and to undertake a dialogue with companies identified as lacking activity on this issue. The results of this analysis are summarized in our report Linking shareholder and natural value. We encourage companies to read this report to gain a better understanding of biodiversity and ecosystem services impacts and dependence and how to manage it.
The Natural Value Initiative intends to repeat this benchmarking exercise in 2010-11, working with our collaborating investors to engage with the companies being evaluated to encourage performance improvement. We invite companies that are not yet engaged in this initiative to join us in this work, to gain a better understanding of this emerging issue and how it impacts risk within their business.
By participating, companies are better able to:
- Communicate their position to investors and more accurately portray how effectively they are managing risks related to biodiversity and ecosystem services
- Gain insight into how to manage business critical natural resource dependencies and impacts which may not be routinely managed through current supply chain practice.
- Review long term strategy for sustainable natural resource management: Each company received an individual summary of their results with recommendations for improvement
Contact info@naturalvalueinitiative.org for details. Alternatively, you can simply keep track of the initiative by signing up to our e-newsletter.
