The Investor Participant Voices series highlights the expertise and experiences of Nature Action 100 Investor Participants.
Vaishnavi Ravishankar is Head of Stewardship at Brunel Pension Partnership. Below, Ravishankar shares reflections on her firm’s participation in Nature Action 100 as an asset owner and engaging companies on nature action.
What value does Brunel see in participating in Nature Action 100 as an asset owner?
Brunel is committed to advancing action to halt and reverse biodiversity and nature loss and increase restoration to deliver a nature-positive impact through our investment opportunities. We also recognize the interconnection with other issues such as climate mitigation and adaptation, and the increasing need to build more resilient environment and societies. Through Nature Action 100, we are able to focus dialogues with companies to refine biodiversity strategies and enhance risk assessments. These dialogues contribute to delivering nature positive outcomes and reducing nature-related financial risks.
What success or wins have you had in your individual engagements with companies under the initiative? What factors contributed to those positive results?
We have been engaging on nature with consumer goods companies through the lens of physical climate risk and understanding how companies are incorporating biodiversity considerations in their adaptation and resilience strategies. Through the first engagement meetings, four companies discussed with us how their boards have oversight on physical climate risks and biodiversity and two of those companies clarified the scope of their risk assessment. We have also observed some companies completing their biodiversity impact and dependencies assessments and overlaying these with their climate and water risk assessments.
Related to your report, can you elaborate how Brunel supports companies in understanding the importance of action on nature and biodiversity loss?
Brunel is framing biodiversity and nature action through the existing climate, water and regenerative agriculture activities pursued by the companies. This highlights the interconnectedness of the issues they are working on but also leverages systems and processes already in place by the company. Brunel’s engagement program is also gathering case studies and good practice. Through peer-to-peer learning, companies will continue to be encouraged to raise the bar on their practices.
Have you faced any barriers in your nature-related engagements? If so, how did you overcome them?
As an asset owner whose assets under management are fully outsourced, we encountered challenges initiating contact with companies with whom we did not have pre-existing relationships. On those occasions, we leaned on our managers to introduce us to the right company contacts. In some cases, they hosted the meetings allowing us to raise questions based on our research. In other cases, they joined as observers and shared insights on the company during preparatory calls helping to shape the agenda. Working in partnership enabled us to communicate our areas of interest and focus from a climate-nature nexus perspective. We also developed joint views on areas of improvement in the context of the engaged companies. So, these meetings provided us with another forum to align expectations in terms of the stewardship delivery and outcomes we are seeking.
What resources have you utilized to inform your engagements with companies?
The research on the Nature Action 100 companies was conducted by Chronos Sustainability who are supporting our engagement. Publicly disclosed materials from the companies were used to develop a framework and conduct an initial benchmark on how the companies were understanding and managing climate physical risks and biodiversity. This included reviewing policies, sustainability reports, annual reports, website and CDP reports. We also reviewed additional publications by the companies such as regenerative agriculture frameworks and reports.
If you used the Nature Action 100 Company Benchmark in your engagement, can you elaborate on how it has been used?
The benchmark provided a baseline understanding of the company and this was supplemented with additional research for the dialogues.