Ce topic appartient à l'appel Biodiversity and ecosystem services
Identifiant du topic: HORIZON-CL6-2024-BIODIV-01-4

Biodiversity, economics and finance: Understanding macro-financial risks associated with biodiversity loss

Type d'action : HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions
Nombre d'étapes : Single stage
Date d'ouverture : 17 octobre 2023
Date de clôture : 22 février 2024 17:00
Budget : €5 000 000
Call : Biodiversity and ecosystem services
Call Identifier : HORIZON-CL6-2024-BIODIV-01
Description :

ExpectedOutcome:

In line with the European Green Deal priorities and in particular with the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030 and the EU strategy for financing the transition to a sustainable economy, the successful proposal(s) will help unlock financial flows needed for reversing biodiversity loss, and contribute to mainstreaming biodiversity, ecosystem services and natural capital in the society and economy.

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

  • New knowledge to accelerate the ecological transition and socioeconomic transformation towards nature-positive economy across EU, in a context of erosion of natural capital and degradation of ecosystems and their essential services;
  • Enhanced understanding and quantification of the macroeconomic significance of biodiversity and implications of its loss at EU level as a basis for more coordinated and better organised responses by key economic actors and institutions, including key policy making processes (e.g., EU semester);
  • Information, tools and metrics to better integrate biodiversity and its loss into mainstream macro-financial analytical frameworks, risk assessment and management methods as a basis for enhancing natural capital and NBS;
  • Development of more comprehensive and more robust environmental risk management in the financial sector;
  • Mobilisation of mainstream finance to slow down, and reverse biodiversity loss in the broader context of environmentally sustainable development by catalysing nature-positive investments contributing to the objectives of the European Green Deal;
  • Evidence base to support the implementation of the EU strategy for financing the transition to a sustainable economy.

Scope:

The erosion of natural capital combined with the collapse of ecosystems entails potentially far-reaching economic and financial implications, including risks for macroeconomic and financial stability of key institutions, countries and regions. The decline of ecosystem services poses physical risks for economic and financial actors that depend upon those services, while socioeconomic transformations could trigger transition risks. As more than half of the world's GDP relies on nature[1], it is estimated that the risks triggered by ecosystem degradation to human societies could be at least as high as those imposed by climate change. Furthermore, these risks are growing as biodiversity is declining at unprecedented rates in human history, which calls for improved understanding, assessment and risk management approaches by key economic actors such as corporates, governments, central banks and financial supervisors. However, a wide range of challenges, including the complexity of ecosystem processes, uncertainty about tipping points and valuation problems, make it very difficult.

Actions should improve the state-of-art knowledge on the relationships between biodiversity, economy and the financial system including better understanding of the nature and degree of risks associated to biodiversity loss, how these risks interact with each other and are likely to evolve over time.

In particular, actions are expected to:

  • Expand the evidence base on the dependence of the EU economy and its financial sector on nature, including by producing relevant macroeconomic indicators, e.g., assessing the share of the EU GDP and employment that depends on nature and evaluate implications of biodiversity loss. As much as possible, research should also extend to country level analysis and/or prepare the ground for future more in-depth studies with increased geographical resolution.
  • Develop scenarios tailored to financial risk assessment, including identification of assets under highest risk from being stranded and sectors that represent the highest risk exposure.
  • Co-design principles for a more comprehensive and more robust environmental risk management in the financial sector, develop innovative methodologies and tools to support risk assessment that can better capture the specificities of nature and ecosystems.
  • Explore tools to assess the alignment of corporates and financial institutions with major European and global biodiversity-related goals, including by leveraging of the EU Taxonomy on Sustainable Finance.
  • Investigate how biodiversity loss interacts with climate change and other socio-environmental challenges in regard of macro-financial stability and how different risks can reinforce each other.
  • Identify possible response options and issue recommendations for EU institutions and Member States, investors, companies and other financial market participants about macro-financial risks of biodiversity loss.

In their research, actions should investigate various possible risk categories including both physical and transition ones, their transmission channels and cascading effects through sectors and supply chains, as well as adaptive capacity of economic and financial agents/institutions, with particular focus on the EU, its Member States and Horizon Europe Associated Countries. The analysis should extend to worst-case scenarios and include low-probability but high-impact biodiversity-related tail risks.

Actions should build on and/or establish synergies with the relevant work by initiatives/projects/studies including, but not limited to, the World Economic Forum’s New Nature Economy Report Series[2], Network for Greening the Financial System[3], Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures[4], The Finance for Biodiversity (F4B) initiative Accounting for ecosystems and their services in the European Union (INCA)[5] and EU Member States (MAIA)[6] projects, Indebted to Nature report[7] and the working paper ‘A “Silent Spring” for the Financial System? Exploring Biodiversity-Related Financial Risks in France’[8].

Actions are expected to involve and co-create with the end-users (financial institutions, non-financial corporations, governments etc.) to fully account for their respective views and needs. Actions should bring together from the start multiple types of scientific expertise in social sciences and humanities, in particular in economics and finance, as well as scientific expertise in biodiversity and natural capital.

Actions should envisage clustering activities with projects funded under this topic as well as with other relevant Horizon Europe and Horizon 2020 projects working on links between biodiversity and sustainable finance and economics of biodiversity[9]. To this end proposals should foresee dedicated tasks and appropriate resources for coordination measures, joint activities, and joint deliverables.

[1]Nature Risk Rising: Why the Crisis Engulfing Nature Matters for Business and the Economy | World Economic Forum (weforum.org).

[2]https://www.weforum.org/reports/new-nature-economy-report-series

[3]https://www.ngfs.net/en

[4]https://tnfd.global/

[5]https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/7870049/12943935/KS-FT-20-002-EN-N.pdf/de44610d-79e5-010a-5675-14fc4d8527d9?t=1624528835061

[6]https://maiaportal.eu/about

[7]https://www.dnb.nl/en/general-news/2020/indebted-to-nature/

[8]https://publications.banque-france.fr/en/silent-spring-financial-system…

[9]Notably Horizon Europe projects Invest4Nature and projects resulting from the calls: “H HORIZON-CL6-2023-BIODIV-01-10: Build up of knowledge on Nature Positive Economy and supporting its scale-up”.