Valuing Nature
How we impact nature affects how nature impacts us.
Resilient ecosystems - the foundation of a sustainable planet and society – are essential to our future.
We’re committed to protecting and restoring nature – from mangrove forests to the bees in our backyard – by increasing biodiversity awareness and inspiring clients and colleagues to put nature at the heart of their plans.
Our goals:
Our actions so far:
Highlighting nature risks
Valuing Water
We know that water is the primary medium through which we will see the impacts of climate change, and despite being connected to five of the most significant risks in the World Economic Forum’s 2022 Global Risk Report, the word ‘water’ is no longer present in the global risk landscape. This reflects one of the most critical issues associated with the global perception of water today: the importance of water is entirely underestimated and undervalued.
At É«¶à¶àÊÓÆµwe are working on ways we can make sure our clients and our communities recognize the social and economic value of water. We’re helping our clients understand what their future water-related risks will be to help them plan for long term resilience. In 2021, we issued a Future Water Risks study, to identify the most significant risks facing industries – from ageing infrastructure to contaminants impacting drinking water quality. Based on this, É«¶à¶àÊÓÆµdeveloped a Water Risk Insights report to shine a spotlight on the different types of water-related risks, how they may impact different industries and to provide solutions to better manage these risks.
Assessing the value of nature
Creating a blue carbon future
Significant areas of the world’s coastlines are lined with mangroves, seagrasses and tidal marshes – all of which represent major carbon sinks, capturing and storing billions of tons of carbon from our atmosphere. These coastal wetland ecosystems do this at rates up to five times greater than terrestrial forests, highlighting their vital importance.
The stored carbon is referred to as “blue carbon” and it can remain in the soil for thousands of years, making it one of the longest-term natural solutions to climate change. Not only do these coastal wetlands help to mitigate against climate change, they also offer protection against storms by absorbing incoming wave energy, often at lower costs than built infrastructure like seawalls and levees.
In partnership with The Nature Conservancy we are assisting in the creation of a ground-breaking investment product: Blue Carbon Resilience Credits. These would, for the first time, value the combined carbon sequestration and resilience benefits provided by coastal wetland ecosystems. The development of blue carbon credits will tap into the carbon credit marketplace that has traditionally focused on terrestrial credits and enable carbon finance to support these critical habitats over the long term.
The resilience credit, purchased with the blue carbon credit or separately, will quantify and invest in the added risk reduction benefits of shielding coastal communities from more intense and frequent natural disasters in the future, conserving and restoring our natural ecosystems to their full potential.
In 2020 the first seagrass offsets in the world were generated as a result of this project.