- Finnish financial sector organisations have signed a joint commitment to nature and biodiversity action.
- The commitment includes a set of indicators to describe and monitor the financial sector’s measures to prevent biodiversity loss between 2024 and 2028.
- Finance Finland conducts an annual survey to track the progress of the sector’s biodiversity action.
- The purpose of the commitment is to show how financial sector companies measure, monitor and disclose their own nature-related risks, dependencies and impacts.
Finance Finland and its member organisations have signed a joint commitment to show how the Finnish financial sector takes biodiversity into account in its operations. The progress of the commitment and financial sector companies’ nature-related measures is monitored between 2024 and 2028, and the results are disclosed to the public. The sector is committed to building a more sustainable future where the consideration of biodiversity-related risks is an integral part of business.
“Banks, insurance companies and investors finance growth and insure business risks. As such, they have great power and responsibility in the prevention of biodiversity loss”, says Finance Finland’s CEO Arno Ahosniemi.
“We must steer global financial flows away from nature-negative activity and towards nature-positive outcomes. Financial sector companies impact biodiversity indirectly, for example through their investments. Even if these impacts aren’t direct, it is essential to identify and minimise them”, Ahosniemi adds.
In 2023, Finance Finland’s Board gave its full support to measures promoting the aims of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. The aim of the framework is to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.
The Finnish financial sector’s nature commitment follows in the footsteps of its climate commitment and related surveys conducted between 2018 and 2022. Many other sectors’ industry representatives and companies have also made their own commitments or roadmaps to promote biodiversity.
“The financial sector and the other Finnish business sectors and industries are already actively working to mitigate biodiversity loss, but there is still room for improvement. You could say that the financial sector’s nature commitment with its indicators and monitoring surveys acts as a compass on the journey towards an ecologically sustainable future”, Ahosniemi says.
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