Dr Rhian-Mari Thomas OBE, chief executive at the Green Finance Institute, has been appointed one of three co-chairs of the Informal Working Group of the Task Force for Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), alongside Antoine Sire, director of company engagement and member of the group executive committee at BNP Paribas and Mariuz Calvet Roquero, director of sustainability and responsible investment at Banorte.
The co-chair positions were appointed through a nomination process by the Informal Working Group members and recommendations by the four partner organisations accelerating the TNFD initiative: Global Canopy, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
The Informal Working Group consists of 62 members including governments and regulatory bodies, banks and financial institutions, and think tanks and consortia. Together the members will establish a detailed work plan for the TNFD ahead of the launch of the Task Force in the first half of 2021. The Task Force will implement the work plan provided by the Informal Working Group over the course of two years resulting in a reporting framework.
Rhian-Mari is also the deputy principal to The Rt Hon Lord Goldsmith, representing the UK Government. The governments of France, Peru, the Netherlands and Switzerland are also represented on the Informal Working Group.
Sir Roger Gifford, chair of the Green Finance Institute, member of the advisory panel for the Dasgupta Review on the economics of biodiversity, senior banker at Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB) and former Lord Mayor of the City of London, is senior adviser to the UK Government’s role within the Informal Working Group.
Speaking about the TNFD, Dr Rhian-Mari Thomas, chief executive at the Green Finance Institute, says: “Companies and the finance providers that support them are increasingly integrating climate considerations into their day-to-day decision making. However, the tragedy of the COVID-19 crisis and the depletion of natural resources demonstrates it is time to also incorporate nature-related impacts and dependencies into financial risk assessments. Convening this working group of more than 60 organisations from across the public and private sector will enable us to inform and shape the approach of the Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, ultimately providing the practical tools needed for business and finance to fully assess their interdependence on the natural environment.”
Mariuz Calvet, director of sustainability and responsible investment at Banorte, says: “Nature requires collective ambition and the global financial sector needs to shift towards a nature-positive economy. An Informal Working Group that includes financial institutions, governments and regulators has been created as a global response to the nature crisis. This group of more than 60 organisations will apply its muscle to deliver a Task Force on Nature Related Financial Disclosures that will be globally recognised and used as a very much needed nature-related reporting standard that will identify nature-related risks, as well as the opportunities to redirect flows towards activities that protect the natural world.”
Antoine Sire, head of company engagement, BNP Paribas Group, says: “Finance is essential to supporting the preservation of biodiversity, which ensures a healthy balance between our planet, citizens and the global economy. The creation of the TNFD is critical to harnessing the expertise and knowledge of different sectors in the fight against biodiversity loss. As a bank that understands its responsibility and role in protecting natural capital, we believe this coalition is a vital step forward in moving the industry towards prioritising this agenda.”
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About the TNFD
Task Force for Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), is being catalysed through a partnership between Global Canopy, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). At its most fundamental level, the TNFD is about enabling the redirection of the flow of global finance towards economic activities and business practices that have little or no impact on nature or indeed are even nature positive. The TNFD aims to achieve this shift towards nature-positive finance by helping financial institutions and companies identify and address their nature-related dependency and impact risks through the development and use of enhanced disclosure and reporting frameworks. Central to the early work of the TNFD will be the assessment of available data and methodologies to identify relevant metrics and indicators for identifying and measuring dependencies and impacts on nature at the company and asset level. For more information visit www.tnfd.info | #TNFD.
About the Green Finance Institute
The Green Finance Institute is an independent, commercially focused organisation, supported by Her Majesty’s Treasury, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the City of London Corporation. As the UK’s principal forum for public and private sector collaboration in green finance, it is uniquely placed to mobilise capital to accelerate the domestic and international transition to a sustainable, net-zero carbon economy that is also climate resilient. The Green Finance Institute convenes and leads mission-led coalitions to identify and unlock barriers to deploy capital at pace and scale towards impactful, real-economy outcomes. For more information visit greenfinanceinstitute.com and follow the Institute on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Media contacts
Green Finance Institute: GreenFinanceInstitute@newgatecomms.com
Global Canopy: Annebeth Wijtenburg a.wijtenburg@globalcanopy.org