🌱 This week in NatureTech #13

[4-minute read]

Author

NatureTech Memos
August 08, 2024

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Happy Thursday! And welcome to our 41 new readers who joined last week.

For those who didn’t see… last week we dropped our latest deep dive ‘What are 9 top investors excited about in NatureTech’. Check it out below.

In today’s edition:

🌊 Ocean Biodiversity Election

🌳 A new cohort of biodiversity start-ups

💼 A whole new suite of NatureTech jobs

Thanks for reading! 

📩Submit deals, jobs and announcements for the newsletter at [email protected]

🐘Long Read (1-Min Read)

The election debate noone is speaking about - Deep Sea Mining

What happened: 

  • This week, at the headquarters of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) in Jamaica, nations negotiating rules governing deep-sea mining faced a vote that could impact the industry for years: who should be the next leader of the regulatory body?

  • The election comes at a pivotal moment for deep-sea-mining and for the future of the world’s oceans

Who?

  • Leticia Carvalho is a Brazilian oceanographer and international diplomat. She was elected to replace Michael Lodge -  a British lawyer who had served for as leader for the last two terms

  • Commercial-scale deep-sea mining has not yet begun anywhere in the world. Some mining companies have pushed for an imminent start of this activity. Lodge has been accused of doing more than he should to help this process along.

Deep Dive:

  • So far, the authority has issued 31 exploration contracts in an area covering 1.5m sq km of the world’s seabed. These allow exploration of the seabed but not commercial mining.

  • Carvalho, compared to Lodge, has been vocal about the need for transparency and scientific rigour around deep-sea mining to ensure decisions are not rushed. 

  • The ISA now has until 2025 to finalise regulations on whether countries can pursue deep-sea mining in international waters.

The arguments?

  • Advocates of deep-sea mining say seabed minerals are needed to fulfill metal shortages and provide materials for renewable energy technologies.

  • Critics say deep-sea minerals are unnecessary to fulfill shortages. They also believe deep-sea mining could irreparably damage the marine environment and lead to unintended consequences

For business:

  • One mining company, Canadian-based The Metals Company (TMC), has repeatedly expressed its intention to apply for an exploitation license later this year. The Metals Company stock is down 38% in the last month at the time of writing

For Nature:

  • A lack of data on deep-sea ecosystems and their biodiversity makes it hard for us to understand the impacts that deep sea mining would have. New leadership seems to recognise this.

  • Just last week… a study found that metal-rich rocks found on the seafloor, produced a kind of “dark oxygen”.  Experts say this is a valid reason to slow down commercial extraction of metals.

For NatureTech:

  • Many start-ups are focussed on helping us generate more data to better understand our Oceans

  • Ocean data companies we’ve spoken to have concerns about any form of involvement in Deep Sea Mining. With new ISA leadership there could be increasing demand for their services. For example, to help ensure we fully understand potential consequences of mining activity.

 Drop us a reply to this email if you want access to our deep dive on these Ocean data companies…

💬Snippets for your lift conversations

  • Big business:  Britain's Royal Mint announced it will extract gold from electronic waste such as televisions, laptops and mobiles at a new factory in south Wales, providing a more biodiversity-friendly source of gold and reducing reliance on mining.

  • Finance: In the UK, The Green Finance Institute has called for reform to Biodiversity Net Gain policies - releasing a paper which identifies and assesses 40 challenges with the current structure.

  • Finance: A number of African governments are in talks to swap some of their commercial loans for cheaper borrowing linked to food security, nature, health and education, said Citigroup’s sub-Saharan Africa

  • Amazing earth: When Vultures Nearly Disappeared in India, Half a Million People Died, Too, Study Finds

  • Policy: Colombian guerrillas withdraw threat to disrupt UN biodiversity summit COP16

  • Policy: The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) has announced further details of its nature workstream, including plans to assess biodiversity within its current sustainability standards.

  • Policy: The European Commission has submitted the EU’s targets for implementing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework The EU’s submission demonstrates the accomplishments of the European Green Deal. The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and the comprehensive Nature Restoration Law

  • Research: A world first project to map Antarctica's plant life has detected almost 45 square kilometres of vegetation - roughly three times the size of the Lake District's Lake Windermere - including growth in previously uncharted areas.

  • Research:  the World Benchmarking Alliance’s (WBA) new Nature Benchmark suggests only one in 20 businesses have assessed how their operations impact nature. Fewer than one in 100 have assessed their dependencies on nature.

  • Opinion piece: If we get it right, insetting could unlock a flood of finance for nature

Ease into investing

Ease being the key word. With automated tool like portfolio rebalancing and dividend reinvestment, Betterment makes investing easy for you, and a total grind for your money.

🎣Deals

  • No deal this week but…Silverstrand Capital announced its latest cohort of eight companies it will put through its biodiversity accelerator

💭Little Bytes

📊Stat: About 2.13 million species have been identified by scientists; around half of these species are insects.

📺️Watch: The biodiversity crisis in numbers - a visual guide

💬 Listen: The ‘ghost roads’ driving tropical deforestation

📆Events

💼Jobs

🐝 Corporate 🐝

🐝Finance🐝

🦊 Nature-based solution projects & nature tech startups 🦊

📩 Feel free to send us deals, announcements, or anything else at [email protected] . Have a great week ahead! 

Written by Ollie. Drop us a message!

Happy Tuesday! And welcome to our 72 new readers who joined last week.

For those who didn’t see… last week we dropped our latest deep dive ‘What are 9 top investors excited about in NatureTech’. Check it out below.

In today’s edition:

🌊 Biodiversity standards?

🌳 A new cohort of biodiversity start-ups

💼 A whole new suite of NatureTech jobs

Thanks for reading! 

📩Submit deals, jobs and announcements for the newsletter at [email protected]

🐘Long Read (1-Min Read)

GRI and TNFD make reporting on biodiversity easier

Driving the news: Two leading standards setters for biodiversity reporting have issued joint guidance. The guidance shows how companies can report against both standards with minimal extra effort! This is welcome news in a complex nature reporting landscape.

Who?

  1. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).  A broad sustainability reporting framework. It has some areas focussed on helping companies disclose their impacts on biodiversity.

  2. The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD). Focussed on helping companies disclose impacts on biodiversity. They also require companies to incorporate nature risks, and opportunities, into their business strategies

Why is it necessary?

  • The alphabet soup: There are a growing number of reporting frameworks and standards. Taken together these acronyms lead to an overwhelming ‘alphabet soup’. For example, SASB, GRI, TCFD, TNFD, CDP, CDSB, IIRC to name a few.

  • Sustainability team overwhelm: For sustainability professionals reporting against many standards increases complexity and time. It also distracts from sustainability initiatives.

  • Case in point: Research from Nature Metrics suggests four in five companies are unprepared for reporting under TNFD

What does the guidance say?

  • The guidance acts like a big map to show where the standards are similar. Think … 80’s US crime drama where suspects are connected with red bits of string.

  • It shows that companies following either standard, can report against both with minimal extra effort. Good news for biodiversity reporting as GRI has a whopping 14,000 companies.

Why it matters for businesses. This should lead to simplified compliance. It should also ensure companies can produce consistent and high-quality nature-related reports. 

Why it matters for Nature. The theory goes… more alignment = reduced complexity for corporate sustainability teams = more adoption  = more businesses considering how they interact with Nature.  

Why it matters for NatureTech. A boost for Measurement, Reporting and Verification startups that help corporates to report against TNFD. For example, Nala Earth, Kuyua, Leeana, NatCap and NatureMetrics

💬Snippets for your lift conversations

  • Big business:  Consumer goods giants including Nestle, Mars Wrigley and Ferrero have backed the European Union's upcoming ban on imported goods linked to deforestation, amid calls from some companies to delay it.

  • Big business: Discount retailer Lidl has committed to investing £300m annually in the British beef sector for the next five years to support adoption of regenerative farming practices, grassland management and reducing carbon

  • Finance: The Australian government has issued a call for partners to help develop biodiversity credit project under the Nature Repair Market (NRM), with $2 mln available in funding 

  • Finance: The Central Bank of Netherland highlights the significant exposure of financial institutions to companies with high or very high dependency on ecosystem services. Dutch financial institutions report having 36% of their total assets, or EUR 510 billion in investments, exposed to the risk of biodiversity loss 

  • Finance: The ESG labelled bonds market saw a noticeable deceleration in 2Q24, with possible reasons being increased regulatory or reporting fatigue. However, SustainableFitch believe the EU’s Nature Restoration Law could boost issuance in H224

  • Nature-For-Sale: Watchdog identifies endangered forest land in two Malaysian states listed for online sale

  • Policy: Time to get to know your supply chain - the  EU adopted its Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive this week. It gives companies a set of obligations to manage impacts of their activities on human rights and environmental matters

  • Policy:The latest World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks failed to break a deadlock on reform aimed at strengthening rules on harmful fisheries subsidies, with the EU and the US blaming India for thwarting the deal.

  • Policy: Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDEC) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) officially launched a five-year partnership to safeguard  marine biodiversity and fisheries resources in the Indo-Pacific region.

  • Research: Goals to stop the decline of nature and clean up the air and water in England are slipping out of reach, a new report has warned

  • Research:  Australia could mend much of its degraded landscapes by directing just 0.3% of GDP to restoration. This could be done in a way that increases agricultural productivity on prime farmland, supports jobs and businesses in regional areas a new study has found.

🎣Deals

  • No deal this week but…Silverstrand Capital announced its latest cohort of eight companies it will put through its biodiversity accelerator

💭Little Bytes

📊Stat: Not only does the Amazon encompass the single largest remaining tropical rainforest in the world, it also houses at least 10% of the world's known biodiversity

📺️Watch: Roots and refuge: the year’s best mangrove images – in pictures

💬 Listen: How do fish know where a sound comes from? Scientists have an answer

💼Jobs

🐝 Corporate 🐝

🐝Finance🐝

🦊 Nature-based solution projects & nature tech startups 🦊

📩 Feel free to send us deals, announcements, or anything else at [email protected] . Have a great week ahead! 

Written by Ollie & Wasim. Drop us a message!

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