WEBINAR: Nature As The Next Wave
Nature has surged from the margins of market consideration to become a significant factor in assessing physical and transition risk. Join Dr Vian Sharif and Dr Simon Zadek, with chair Simon Mills, as they explore this development and its implications for the investment community.
Tuesday, 26 April 2022
11:00 - 11:45 BST
The global economy is 100% dependent on nature, but nature has been historically mis-valued, and its economic benefits inequitably distributed. Nature has surged from the margins of market consideration to become a significant factor in assessing physical and transition risk.
Join Dr Vian Sharif and Dr Simon Zadek, with chair Simon Mills, as they explore this development and its implications for the investment community. They will discuss the slew of new initiatives like the Task Force on Nature related Financial Disclosure, new markets such as nature based solutions linked to voluntary carbon markets and the emergence of biodiversity credit markets, new instruments such as nature performance sovereign bonds, new supporting business such as those emerging to deliver finance relevant data, and new, frameworks and policy developments such as those being advanced by the work of the Taskforce on Nature Markets.
Speakers:
Dr Simon Zadek is Co-Lead of the Taskforce on Nature Markets Secretariat, Chair of Finance for Biodiversity, Director of Migrant Nation, and Senior Advisor to the Task Force on Nature Related Financial Disclosure. He was Head, Secretariat, UN Secretary General’s Task Force on Digital Financing of the Sustainable Development Goals, Senior Advisor on Finance in the office of the UN Secretary General, and Co-Director of UNEP’s Finance Inquiry. He co-Chaired China’s Green Finance Task Force, and led the Green Finance Study Group secretariat under the Chinese, German and Argentinian G20 Presidencies.
Prior to this, he was Senior Advisor to the World Economic Forum and the Global Green Growth Institute, founder and CEO of the international think tank, AccountAbility and Development Director of the New Economics Foundation. He was Visiting Professor at the Singapore Management University and the Copenhagen Business School, and has been a senior fellow at Tsinghua School of Economics and Management, Harvard`s Kennedy School of Government, and the University of Southern Africa.
He has worked with many corporations, governments and multi stakeholder initiatives on their sustainability and broader strategies, been a member of the International Advisory Board of Generation Investment Management, and has published extensively, including the award winning book, The Civil Corporation.
Dr Vian Sharif is a member of the Taskforce on Nature Markets. Her work centres on driving the development of innovative technology solutions to catalyse the shift to more sustainable capital allocations with a focus on the natural environment. She is the founder of ESG nature insights fintech platform NatureAlpha, and heads sustainability at financial investment technology firm FNZ.
Her work includes collaborating with academics at Cambridge and Oxford Universities on the development of science-based insights for investor decision-making with a focus on nature risk and impact, including the Benchmark for Nature Project, the Cambridge AI for the study of Environmental Risks Centre and as a guest researcher at the Oxford Martin School.
Prior to this she spent over a decade in the global asset management industry.
As part of a number of governmental and international sustainability advisory groups, she was a guest researcher at the Oxford Martin School, Member of the Taskforce for Nature Related Financial Disclosures Technical Experts Group and the U.K. Government’s Business Advisory group to the Convention on Biological Diversity.
Vian holds a PhD in environmental behaviour change, and a masters degree from Cambridge University.
