New funding will boost efforts towards a greener economy

Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) will host a new multi-partner research programme that will help the global financial sector develop strategies to protect nature and halt current biodiversity loss.

The overall aim of Mistra biodiversity finance programme (FinBio) is to facilitate real change by providing cutting-edge transdisciplinary research to develop the capacity of the financial sector to contribute significantly and meaningfully to a nature positive economy.

The four-year programme is funded by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (Mistra). It will break new ground because it consists of researchers that rarely interact, ranging from computational biology to trade economics and philosophy.

It builds on considerable research already conducted by the SRC and its partners and will capitalise on other Mistra programmes such as Mistra Food Futures and Fairtrans.

Impact partners to accelerate change

The ambitious programme will partner with selected companies and financial sector actors. These partners have been selected because of their track record of innovative thinking and experimenting with new approaches to finance.

Amid a growing recognition within the finance sector that biodiversity loss has a dramatic impact on the global economy, FinBio will thus help accelerate efforts to integrate consideration of biodiversity and climate resilience into financial decision-making.

Sebastien Eisinger, Pictet Group’s Managing Partner, says: “Biodiversity is a major ESG topic and we’re delighted to extend our relationship with the SRC and work with consortium partners to advance our collective knowledge on interactions between biodiversity and investments.”

Beatrice Crona, professor at the SRC and a senior scientific advisor to the programme adds: “The financial system is a major force in undermining biosphere resilience, but it also has the potential to promote and restore nature. Different financial actors have different roles to play in the transformation to nature positive future, and we will develop a range of tools and strategies that will help them realize their potential.”