Signposts
Biodiversity Loss & Ecosystem Breakdown
Resistance is futile, resilience is vital, responding is critical
Nature is a material investment risk; global ecosystem degradation and collapse is a risk to national security; and we are witnessing the devasting impacts of wild fires, droughts and extreme heat daily. It can be overwhelming but consider can I help - build my knowledge, shape standards and policy, repost to other who are also interested?
What I am doing
The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) short, confidential survey to help track global market progress and gain insights into the applications and implementation of nature-related assessment and reporting. So far about 20 Asset owners and about 30 asset managers have responded, which includes me. It took me about 35 mins (I added extra detail in the free-text section).
📃 Take the survey: 2026 Status Report survey
🗓️ Deadline: 14 August 2026
What I am listening to
GFI’s Financing Nature podcast currently has a 4 part series focusing on the UK (one more episode to come)
And the Rest Is Politics podcast launched a special four-part investigative series titled When Nature Becomes A Security Threat, hosted by former Green Party leader Caroline Lucas. Also on Youtube, or accesible where you get your podcasts.
What I am reading
Lots but some focused quick reads include:
Chatham House - Europe’s summer of fires: Burnham must centre climate adaptation in policies – 3 minute read but links to dig deeper
Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC) Insights; Financing nature: Policy strategies to support investment in nature markets
The podcast nudged me to dig out HMG's Global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security, a national security assessment (not one for the beach)
From Academia - Biodiversity loss will decrease the future creditworthiness of nations
… And longer reads for those who want to dig deeper
IPBES Assessment affirms that nature loss is a systemic business risk
UN Environment Programme State of Finance for Nature
When I state nature is a material investment risk, I appreciate the need to unpack the collective term 'nature' into more tangible, specific risks. My use of nature risk includes (but not limited to) water scarcity (very front of mind & material right now), deforestation and land-use change, biodiversity loss, soil degradation, ocean and fisheries depletion, pollution and waste, and climate-nature feedback loops – these can have direct financial impacts through disruption to production and supply chains (see FT article on the drought impact on Rhine shipping), raw material costs, and regulatory compliance.
Suggested by others
These are extracted from the comments on the original post, thanks for all contributions;
The UN published a draft report assessing progress against the Global Biodiversity Framework targets. The target on finance for nature does pretty poorly. The report is 300+ pages but Carbon Brief have done a great summary: https://www.carbonbrief.org/world-falling-short-on-22-of-23-nature-targets-for-2030-says-draft-un-report
Saker Nusseibeh’s wonderful keynote at the IFRS Foundation conference—a rare insight on the true nature of the problem to be solved around minute 14…https://www.ifrs.org/news-and-events/news/2026/07/four-takeaways-from-the-ifrs-foundation-conference/
Together with a case study that illustrates "upside down accounting incentives", BP case study Constrained by Accounting. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3811577
For the full deep-dive the Dasgupta Review cannot be beaten, but at 610 pages I am going to suggest people start with the 10 page Headline Messages.