FINANCE
Finance News From bees to balancing act: BIODIVERSITY LOSS SHAKES UP FINANCIAL SECTOR AND HITS HOME IN ZUIDAS BIODIVERSITY encompasses every conceivable form of life on earth, including variations within species, between species and between ecosystems.
CAUSES of biodiversity loss are: changes in land use, overexploitation, pollution, introduction of exotic species and climate change.
THE FINANCIAL RISKS OF BIODIVERSITY LOSS The Dutch national bank (DNB) and the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency reported last summer that Dutch banks, insurance companies and pension
In recent months some twenty bee hotels were set up around the district as part of
funds have a combined 510 billion euros
the Zuidas Amsterdam Development Office’s Building the Future project. But even as
in outstanding loans to organizations with
bees got buzzing outside, inside the offices buzzing started as well – about the financial
high or very high ecosystem dependency3.
sector and the potential impacts of biodiversity loss. What’s going on?
This capital – constituting a third of their portfolios – is exposed to direct risk as a
Over the last fifty years there’s been
catastrophe. The European Commission
a 68% decline in global species
has estimated the economic value of
populations1, and according to the most
wildlife diversity at as much as 40 trillion
Physical risk
recent count, ecosystems in one in five
euros a year – that’s more than half
The report distinguishes between three
countries are on the brink of collapse2.
of global GDP. The fragile relationship
categories of risk. The first is physical
Apart from the societal impacts, this
between the ecology and economics is
risk, which affects companies whose
entails a financial and economic
starting to hit home for all of us.
continuity would be threatened by loss
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result of biodiversity loss.
