Participating in two new initiatives: AkademikerPension strengthens the focus on biodiversity

22 September 2023

AkademikerPension publishes on its website:

The international economic system is overloading the Earth’s ecological system, and it will be very expensive in the long term if we fail to restore the balance and create sustainable economic development.

AkademikerPension has long worked specifically with biodiversity and is now taking this work to the next level with two new international initiatives.

“There is an urgent need for an increased focus on biodiversity. Fortunately, more and more initiatives are starting to appear, and more tools and data are becoming available. As an investor, we must pay particular attention to how companies in our portfolio are dependent on nature in their value chains, as well as how they affect biodiversity – both negatively and positively”, says investment director at AkademikerPension, Anders Schelde.

Looking for dialogue with several companies

One of the initiatives is Nature Action 100, which is a global initiative following the same model as Climate Action 100+, where a number of investors come together to put pressure on a number of companies on climate.

Nature Action 100 focuses on companies in key sectors that are systematically important to reversing the loss of nature and biodiversity by 2030.

AkademikerPension contributes with the participation to pressure all 100 companies and will at the same time seek dialogue with Novo Nordisk and Brazilian JBS.

“We want to put our energy where it makes a difference, and Novo is obvious, as the pharma industry has a very high impact on and dependence on biodiversity. We have previously been in close dialogue with JBS, and with Nature Action 100 behind us, we could achieve much further,” says Anders Schelde.

Focus on biodiversity in annual report

At AkademikerPension, we have worked with biodiversity for years, among other things in our dialogue with Carlsberg, the Brazilian government and JBS, and in our annual letter to Danish companies, the subject was a major focal point.

“Both globally and nationally, we are far from the target, and I think it is more difficult to work with biodiversity than, for example, the climate. It is a far more multifaceted problem. However, I find optimism in the fact that we can copy many of the templates from the work in the climate area, so that hopefully we can all move faster”, says Anders Schelde.

Co-signer on declaration of support

In addition to participating in Nature Action 100, we at AkademikerPension also participate in the initiative Finance for Biodiversity Pledge, which is a statement of support for financial institutions to work with biodiversity.

Here we become co-signatories along with 140 other financial institutions with a total AUM of 20,000 billion dollars.

As a signatory, we want to send a signal to global leaders to protect and restore biodiversity. And in addition, through our own investments, we commit ourselves to work for

• collaboration and knowledge sharing
• active ownership
• impact mapping
• set goals by 2024 at the latest
• report publicly on the above by 2025

“These two initiatives are hopefully the first of many more, which will eventually make companies and managers worldwide take biodiversity more seriously than today”, concludes Anders Schelde.

Facts:

Biodiversity is a collective term for ecosystems and, in short, covers all life on Earth. The UN defines it as: “The diversity of living organisms in all environments, both on land and in water, as well as in the ecological interactions in which the organisms are part. Biodiversity includes both variation within and between species as well as the diversity of ecosystems.”

Source: AkademikerPension