Iceberg Data Lab and I Care & Consult Selected to Provide First of its Kind Biodiversity Impact Measurement Tool for Investors

AXA Investment Managers, BNP Paribas Asset Management (“BNPP AM”), Sycomore Asset Management and Mirova (an affiliate of Natixis Investment Managers) are pleased to announce that they have selected the consortium comprised of Iceberg Data Lab and I Care & Consult as the research provider to develop a tool to allow investors to measure how their investments impact biodiversity. This selection was the final step of a structured, highly competitive tender process initiated by a Call for Expression of Interest (“CEI”), early this year.

“This tender process has been a collaborative experience and we thank all the bidders for their huge involvement. Bringing together the data modelling skills of Iceberg Data Lab with the deep expertise on biodiversity and methodology build-up of I Care & Consult, their innovative approach have convinced us unanimously. We are eager to report to our stakeholders on the biodiversity impacts of our portfolios and progressively integrate them into our assessment and investment processes” say Julien Foll of AXA IM, Robert-Alexandre Poujade of BNPP AM, Sarah Maillard of Mirova and Jean-Guillaume Péladan of Sycomore AM.

Iceberg Data Lab and I Care & Consult have joined forces to expand the Corporate Biodiversity Footprint, metric quantifying the impact on biodiversity of corporate across their activities. The tool being expanded will help investors to integrate impacts to nature and biodiversity into their risk assessments and research. In addition, the transparency of the selected approach will positively contribute to the required convergence towards more standard and comparable metrics. This should serve as an important catalyst for private-sector action, with ripple effects throughout our economies.

The CEI was supported by an Investor Statement on the need for biodiversity impact metrics¹, which gathered more than thirty signatures from leading institutional investors around the world, representing over €6 trillion in assets under management. The Statement demonstrates that there is currently an unmet demand for quality research to assist investors in responding to the biodiversity crisis.

The sixth mass extinction of life on Earth is underway at an unprecedented pace, according to the IPBES² (Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, 2019). The population sizes of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles have seen an alarming average drop of 68% since 1970, as recently assessed by the WWF (Living Planet Report 2020). The World Economic Forum calculates that this crisis threatens half of global GDP, whereas positive pathways are estimated to bring $10 trillion in business value and create 395 million jobs. For the first time in the World Economic Forum survey’s 10 year outlook, the top five global risks in terms of likelihood are all environmental, including major biodiversity loss (Global Risks Report 2020). Biodiversity loss threatens the achievement of 80% of Sustainable Development Goals sub-targets related to poverty, hunger, health, water, cities, climate, oceans and land (IPBES, 2019).

The investors recognize that much more needs to be done to promote corporate transparency on nature-related dependencies and impacts. Also, many challenges remain to capture nature’s complexity into manageable metrics and to integrate the latest science into investment decision making. Therefore, AXA IM, BNPP AM, Mirova and Sycomore AM will continue to collaborate with key actors and initiatives in the biodiversity field such as CDC Biodiversité and its Global Biodiversity Score, BFFI³, UNEP WCMC⁴, OP2B⁵, UNEP FI⁶ and TNFD⁷.