Finance and Natural Capital

  • 28 March 2018
Finance and Natural Capital

There has been increasing attention paid to the subject of natural capital in the financial sector in recent years. CREM and VBDO have developed a guide and training course to provide more in-depth information in this area: ‘Natural Capital & Financial Institutions’. The VBDO is also working with the Natural Capital Coalition and the National Capital Finance Alliance in the Financial Sector Supplement for the Natural Capital Protocol. The EU has started another successful initiative, with the CoP Finance@Biodiversity, which is partially under the guidance of NextGreen. The sustainability pioneers in the business world also want to contribute to the conservation and sustainable use of natural capital.

Expeditions

CREM, VBDO and NextGreen have bundled their forces to build bridges between the financial sector, the leaders in the business world, and knowledge centres in the area of natural capital. They are doing so by organizing expeditions into finance and natural capital. During two expeditions – one focused on the built environment and the other in the area of agro-food – participants ventured out for an afternoon to locations that play a central role in a natural capital issue (or its solution), in order to help the financial sector to learn more about that issue. During the first expedition, on the 23rd of January 2018, we visited the CIRCL Building in Amsterdam and met with ABN Amro, the Van Nieuwpoort Group, Dekker Natural Resources, the Natural Capital Coalition and Heijmans. For the second, on the 6th of March 2018, we learned about organics and working with nature at Roubos Farm, a Bayer’s ForwardFarm. Bayer, ACTIAM, Rabobank and Eosta shared their ambitions and experiences in a conversation between financers, investors and companies.

White Paper

The Finance and Natural Capital expeditions were organized in close cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality. The results have been published in a white paper produced together with VBDO and NextGreen (download).

Expedition programme and presentations

For more information: Jolanda van Schaick