ESG Investor’s weekly round-up of news on technology and tools in the sustainable investing sector, including WWF, UNEP, S&P Global Sustainable1, ISS ESG, and CHOOOSE.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has launched a Biodiversity Risk Filter, which looks to aid companies in tackling nature-related risks. The biodiversity risk tool uses 50 datasets from organisations including NASA, the World Bank and IUCN, and aims to help investors and companies understand the risks they face from nature loss, as well as identify and reduce biodiversity-related risks across their own operations, their value chains and investments. The WWF launched a report, ’Tackling Biodiversity Risk’, alongside the tool, which found the vast majority of 600 companies listed on the MSCI ACWI index portfolio companies which had the Biodiversity Risk Filter methodology applied to have a medium or high exposure to biodiversity-related risks. Karen Ellis, WWF’s Chief Economist. said: “WWF’s new Biodiversity Risk Filter is powerful new tool that gives decision makers a clear picture of biodiversity risks so they can make better choices for their companies and, at the same time, help protect and restore nature.”
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and sustainability intelligence provider S&P Global Sustainable1 have launched a new methodology for analysing companies’ impacts and dependencies on nature, aiming to enable the financial sector to measure and address nature-related risk by providing actionable analytics on nature impacts and dependencies. The methodology – named the Nature Risk Profile – outlines metrics and data that enable companies and investors to identify and quantify nature-related exposure which covers several key areas, including risks arising from companies’ impacts on biodiversity and risks arising from companies’ dependencies on biodiversity. Neville Ash, Director of UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre, said: “The methodology provides a major step forward to deliver the actions required for transformative change and support the finance sector’s critical contribution to delivering the ambitions of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. This methodology links science, policy and finance to bring nature to the heart of financial decision-making.”
ISS ESG, the responsible investment arm of the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), has launched the ISS ESG Cyber Risk Score, a tool which looks to help investors predict portfolio companies’ relative exposure to cyber breaches within the next 12 months. The Cyber Risk Score will provide metric that aims to show how well a company manages and maintains its network security, with the score assessing organisational cyber risk oversight and management through a number of IP and domain-based data collections. Cyber Risk’s analytics team periodically collects global risk indicators reflecting a company’s cyber security risk behaviours, incorporating elements indicative of organizational security posture on endpoints, software services, and infrastructure configuration. This is combined with historical data to inform ISS’ proprietary risk model that uses machine learning to identify patterns and signatures indicative of potential breach events. The Cyber Risk Score will be added to ISS’ Benchmark Governance Research and Voting reports for S&P 500 companies ahead of the 2023 proxy season.
Norway-based climate tech company CHOOOSE has raised US$15 million in a capital round, which will be used to scale up the firm’s platform and further embed climate action solutions. CHOOOSE’s software platform enables enterprises to integrate climate action into their customer experiences, with companies in the aviation, travel, and logistics sectors partnering to achieve this. The funding round was co-led by Temasek-owned decarbonisation-focused investment company GenZero and sustainability-focused investment vehicle SOUNDWaves. Andreas Slettvoll, CEO and Co-founder of CHOOOSE, said: “The need for climate action has never been greater. But getting started can seem daunting – we know software can make this easier by embedding awareness and access to climate solutions in the right places. This is why we’re building CHOOOSE.”
