Centre programme FinBio secures five more years of Mistra funding worth SEK 50 million

Mistra FinBio, hosted by the Centre, has received continued funding from Mistra for a second phase. The new phase will build on FinBio’s first four years of work connecting biodiversity science and finance, while placing greater emphasis on testing tools, building capacity, and supporting practical change in financial decision-making. FinBio Phase II will run from 2027 to 2031, following FinBio Phase I that runs from 2023-2026.

“I’m very pleased that Mistra has decided to support a second phase of FinBio,” says Garry Peterson, programme director of Mistra FinBio and professor at the Centre. He continues:

“A big thank you to Mistra for the continued support, as well as to all the researchers, partners, board members, and colleagues who have helped build FinBio’s first phase. I look forward to working together through 2031 to advance science-based approaches to nature-positive finance.”

Johan Edman, programme director at Mistra comments in a press release:

“Mistra FinBio has shown that its research is at the cutting edge. A scientifically distinguished evaluation panel rated the program highly, while also identifying opportunities for improvement. It will be interesting to follow the program's second phase, which will involve a partially renewed consortium of partners. It is worth noting that the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University continues to deliver strong research results. This is particularly noteworthy given that Mistra funded the centre for many years and helped build the strong research environment that exists today.”

Why biodiversity finance matters

Biodiversity loss is increasingly recognised as a threat not only to ecosystems, but also to economies, companies, communities, and the financial system. FinBio’s Phase II proposal describes biodiversity loss as “unraveling the web of life” that supports societies, economies, and finance, and highlights the need to shift financial flows toward the revival of nature.

“Financial decisions shape nature, yet they are often poorly connected to scientific knowledge about how living systems work, change, and support societies. FinBio’s next phase will help finance engage with the complexity of the biosphere. Mistra’s continued support enables us to work with academic and impact partners to develop practical tools and knowledge that can help finance move away from reinforcing biodiversity loss and toward supporting a nature-positive financial system,” says Garry Peterson.

Finance shapes land use, food systems, infrastructure, supply chains, and investment flows. These decisions can intensify biodiversity loss, but they can also help protect, restore, and regenerate ecosystems. FinBio’s second phase is designed to help financial actors understand these connections more clearly and use science-based knowledge in decisions about valuation, risk management, reporting, stewardship, and capital allocation.

A central challenge is that biodiversity cannot be treated as a single environmental indicator. Nature’s connection to people depends on the history and context or particular places, and biodiversity data is often uncertain, spatially uneven, taxonomically biased, and difficult to translate into financial use cases. At the same time, financial reporting can hide biodiversity impacts, dependencies, and associated human-rights risks. FinBio Phase II responds to these challenges by developing more robust ways to connect ecological knowledge with financial practice.

From recognition to implementation

Since its launch in 2022, FinBio has conducted interdisciplinary research across accounting, biodiversity science, economics, philosophy, finance, and sustainability science. In Phase I, the programme tested environmental DNA methods for biodiversity monitoring, developed tools including the Earth System Impact portfolio assessment tool and the INFORM framework for investor engagement, contributed to debates on biodiversity reporting, and launched the Shock Tracker database to help financial actors consider social-ecological shocks in risk assessment.

Phase II will build on these results while moving further toward implementation. The programme will continue to develop, test, and improve tools and methods that embed science-based nature insights into valuation, risk management, and capital allocation. It will also focus on institutional barriers to change, including how reporting, metrics, policy targets, regulation, and financial practice can be better aligned.

Four themes for the second phase

FinBio Phase II is organised around four strategic themes.

The first theme, Data, will develop a biodiversity data quality hierarchy and AI-driven decision-support tools to help financial actors assess the quality, uncertainty, and usefulness of biodiversity information. It will also examine how biodiversity loss and human-rights impacts are recognised or obscured in reporting, assurance, and governance frameworks.

The second theme, Futures, will identify blind spots in standard climate and macro-financial scenarios by integrating nature–economy feedbacks and spatially explicit nature-loss models. It will also explore how finance could contribute to nature-positive futures, including by identifying and prototyping innovative financial instruments and using scenario methods to imagine different pathways for nature-positive finance.

The third theme, Risk and resilience, will develop the scientific basis for understanding how ecosystem degradation can amplify climate hazards such as floods, droughts, wildfires, pest outbreaks, and other shocks. It will also translate these insights into tools and strategies for two sectors with high nature-dependency and systemic importance: real estate and agrifood.

The fourth theme, Practice, will translate research into training, guidance, briefs, playbooks, and co-created tools for financial actors. This includes modular training curricula, Science-to-Practice products, pilot use cases, and finance-specific “Resilience Must-Knows” designed to build competence beyond regulatory compliance.

Working with financial-sector partners

A key feature of Phase II is its stronger focus on co-creation and testing with impact partners. FinBio will work with financial actors and networks including Nordea, AP7, Pictet Asset Management, VC2050, Sustainable Finance Lab, Natural Capital Alliance, and UN PRI. These partners span banking, public equity investment, venture capital, asset management, research and innovation networks, and international responsible-investment networks.

“FinBio Phase II is about helping financial actors move from recognising biodiversity as a relevant issue to developing the knowledge, tools, and capabilities needed to act. Our aim is to support a financial system that understands its dependence on nature and can contribute to long-term ecological, social, and economic resilience,” says Centre professor Beatrice Crona, who serves as senior science advisor for FinBio during phase I and will become the programme's scientific director as of phase II.

The programme’s theory of change is based on the idea that transformation requires reinforcing change at individual, organisational, and policy levels. FinBio will work with change agents inside partner organisations, using their insights to develop tools, guidance, and training that can spread more widely through the financial system.