Biodiversity and Agriculture: What Role for Sustainable Finance?

Agriculture stands at a crossroads: simultaneously dependent on natural ecosystems while sometimes contributing to their degradation. To enlighten finance professionals about the risks and opportunities associated with this strategic sector, WeeFin's expert team has just published a comprehensive guide.

Essential to global food security and a pillar of our economies, agriculture is also one of the main causes of biodiversity loss. Because it relies entirely on natural resources – fertile soils, water, pollinators, climate – and in turn exerts considerable pressure on these same ecosystems, it logically finds itself at the heart of sustainable finance challenges.

A Guide to Understanding the Close Links Between Biodiversity, Agriculture and Sustainable Finance

WeeFin's expert team has written a detailed guide to help financial institutions understand these interdependencies and provide them with concrete benchmarks to better guide their investment decisions. It is part of a series of publications dedicated to the links between sustainable finance and biodiversity.

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This practical guide provides a precise overview of agriculture's impacts on and dependencies on biodiversity: soil depletion and erosion, water resource pollution, atmospheric emissions, disappearance of beneficial organisms, massive deforestation... All these systemic risk factors weigh on market stability and long-term investment profitability. Not to mention the hidden costs of the system, the growing exposure of assets to climate hazards, but also the measurable benefits associated with ecosystem restoration and the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices.

Tools to Adapt Investment Policies to Agricultural Challenges

The guide doesn't stop at diagnosis. It offers practical tools for integrating these issues into financial strategies: construction of adapted ESG ratings, implementation of sectoral exclusion thresholds, rigorous monitoring of controversies, individual or collective shareholder dialogue with the companies concerned. These levers, already mobilized by certain pioneering actors, are illustrated by concrete examples of investment policies, international collaborative initiatives, and specialized funds, allowing professionals to draw inspiration from existing practices and calibrate their own approaches.

The ambition of this guide is clear: to provide financial actors with an operational framework to transform one of the most exposed sectors into a central lever for ecological transition and biodiversity preservation.

Download our guide.

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