- Biodiversity is shifting from being seen as a purely environmental concern to a genuine financial issue, as it involves economic dependencies, physical risks, supply chain stability, and long-term value creation.
- Unlike climate, which entered finance through structured indicators like carbon emissions, biodiversity is far more complex to measure because it encompasses soils, water, forests, pollinators, land use, and broader interactions between human activities and living systems.
- Several converging dynamics are accelerating the topic, including increasing physical risks, resource tensions, evolving European regulatory frameworks, rising investor expectations, and the growing role of double materiality analysis.
- Biodiversity-related frameworks are still under construction, with financial actors seeking better ways to measure nature dependencies, economic impacts, and portfolio vulnerabilities, while data remains partial and methodologies vary across sectors.
- Sustainable finance is progressively expanding beyond carbon and climate to encompass biodiversity, water, natural resources, and ecosystem resilience, reflecting a growing awareness that economic stability depends on the proper functioning of the living world.
For a long time, biodiversity was mainly perceived as an environmental issue.
Biodiversity is often considered important, yet still viewed as relatively disconnected from financial mechanisms and investment decisions.
Today, this perception is changing. Because behind biodiversity also lie:
- economic dependencies,
- physical risks,
- resource tensions,
- value chain challenges,
- and questions related to the resilience of business models.
Biodiversity is becoming a genuine financial issue.
Because behind the challenges linked to the living world also lie questions of resource availability, supply chain stability, economic resilience and, increasingly, long-term value creation.
A more complex issue to grasp than climate
Climate issues gradually became integrated into finance through relatively structured indicators such as carbon emissions, climate scenarios and carbon budgets.
Biodiversity is different, because it simultaneously involves soils, water, forests, oceans, pollinators, land use and the broader interactions between human activities and living systems.
This complexity explains why biodiversity remained only marginally integrated into financial analysis for so long.
Yet economic dependencies are very real
As highlighted by the French Foundation for Biodiversity Research, many economic activities directly depend on the proper functioning of ecosystems: soil quality, water availability, pollination, resource stability and supply chain resilience.
Sectors such as agriculture, food, textiles, healthcare, construction, industry, energy and tourism are directly concerned.
In Horizon & Beyond’s Sustainable Finance MOOC, Marguerite Culot, Nature Expert within the Caisse des Dépôts Group, explains that financial actors are increasingly understanding these dependencies and their economic implications.
For a long time, impacts on nature were often treated as difficult-to-measure externalities. Today, they are increasingly analysed through the lens of risks, vulnerabilities and long-term dependencies.
Why the topic is accelerating now
Several dynamics are converging:
- increasing physical risks,
- growing tensions on certain resources,
- evolving European frameworks,
- rising investor expectations,
- and the development of nature-related methodologies.
Double materiality is also playing an important role.
Companies and investors are now seeking to better understand both their impacts on ecosystems and their dependence on the living world. This evolution is recent, but it is accelerating rapidly.
The topic is also gaining visibility across financial ecosystems. Publications, tools, methodologies and biodiversity-focused webinars are multiplying within financial institutions, market actors and certain public institutions.
Biodiversity is progressively becoming a risk management issue
In the MOOC, Marguerite Culot also explains that nature-related challenges are not limited to environmental protection alone.
They may also affect supply chains, resource availability, agricultural and industrial models, operational costs and the resilience of economic activities.
In other words, biodiversity is now entering both financial and extra-financial risk analysis.
A topic still under construction
Unlike climate, biodiversity-related frameworks are still in a structuring phase.
Financial actors are still seeking better ways to measure biodiversity dependencies, the impacts associated with certain economic activities and the vulnerabilities likely to affect portfolios over the long term.
Data remains partial.
Methodologies are evolving rapidly.
And approaches still vary significantly across sectors and geographies.
A broader vision of sustainable finance
For a long time, sustainable finance focused primarily on carbon and climate.
Today, the perspective is progressively expanding toward:
- biodiversity,
- water,
- natural resources,
- value chain dependencies,
- and the resilience of economic systems.
This evolution reflects a growing awareness: economic stability also depends on the proper functioning of ecosystems and the availability of natural resources.
And this is already transforming the way investors, companies and financial institutions analyse long-term risks and opportunities.
A transformation that is only beginning
Biodiversity does not replace climate-related issues. It progressively enriches the way finance analyses dependencies, resources, physical risks, resilience and long-term value creation.
And this transformation is probably only just beginning.
Going further
👉 Join Horizon & Beyond’s Complete MOOC, developed in partnership with Institut Louis Bachelier and Institut de la Finance Durable, to gain clear insights into double materiality and the transformations shaping sustainable finance.
👉 Join Horizon & Beyond’s Essential MOOC to acquire the fundamentals of sustainable finance in less than two hours.
Frequently Asked Questions
Biodiversity is now recognized as a genuine financial issue because many economic activities directly depend on ecosystem functioning, including soil quality, water availability, pollination, and supply chain resilience. Sectors such as agriculture, food, textiles, healthcare, construction, energy, and tourism face real economic risks tied to biodiversity loss.
Unlike climate, which can be measured through relatively structured indicators like carbon emissions and climate scenarios, biodiversity simultaneously involves soils, water, forests, oceans, pollinators, land use, and complex interactions between human activities and living systems. This multidimensional complexity explains why it remained only marginally integrated into financial analysis for so long.
Several converging dynamics are driving this acceleration: increasing physical risks, growing resource tensions, evolving European regulatory frameworks, rising investor expectations, and the development of nature-related methodologies. The concept of double materiality is also playing a key role, pushing companies and investors to assess both their impacts on ecosystems and their dependence on the living world.
Biodiversity-related frameworks are still in a structuring phase, with financial actors seeking better ways to measure biodiversity dependencies, impacts of economic activities, and portfolio vulnerabilities. Data remains partial, methodologies are evolving rapidly, and approaches still vary significantly across sectors and geographies.
Sustainable finance is progressively expanding beyond its historical focus on carbon and climate to encompass biodiversity, water, natural resources, value chain dependencies, and the resilience of economic systems. This reflects a growing awareness that economic stability depends on the proper functioning of ecosystems, transforming how investors and financial institutions analyse long-term risks and opportunities.
