Robin Millington, chief executive officer of non-profit financial think tank Planet Tracker, says she co-founded the research firm in 2018 with the aim of "embedding the value of nature into global financial flows to ensure sustainability of the environment and of the businesses and products dependent upon natural capital".
Millington leads a team with expertise in financial analysis, industry supply chain issues, and environmental data. They produce reports targeting environmentally unsustainable industrial practices and identify the companies causing the damage and the investors who are enabling these practices to continue unchallenged.
The impact of Planet Tracker's reports includes a recent announcement that Uruguay is launching a deforestation-linked sovereign bond, which specifically references Planet Tracker's work in that field.
Over the last 12 months, Planet Tracker has published over 20 reports, including the Financial Markets Roadmap for Transforming the Global Food System which analysed over 400,000 companies across the food supply chain and sets out practical steps that investors can take to help achieve a net zero food system by 2050.
Millington commented: "To win an award for leadership in the sustainability space is a rare honour, but if Planet Tracker deserves this recognition, it is down to the hard work and dedication of the amazing team that I work with and the fact that we all share a common vision: where the future of the planet is concerned, accepting the status quo is not an option – we are all responsible for making change happen".
She added: "Planet Tracker exists to drive real change across key industry sectors by convincing capital markets to align their investment strategies with planetary boundaries and use their financial power to bring about real change in environmentally harmful business practices. Our mission is to create significant and irreversible transformation of global financial activities by 2030 towards a financial system that is fully aligned with a resilient, just, nature-positive economy, in turn facilitating a net zero planet.
"At the heart of our thinking is the belief that a holistic approach to the planet's problems is now essential. Climate and nature can longer be considered separately. Nature loss, despite the widespread acceptance of its severity, has remained in climate change's shadow as a subject of political and financial concern until more recently – notably the adoption of the Global Biodiversity Framework in December 2022.
"Now is the moment to start changing that dialogue, especially in financial markets where net zero concepts have gained momentum but metrics to measure biodiversity loss are still being hammered out".
Millington is a former member of the Supervisory Board of the Gold Standard Foundation, established in 2003 as a standard to verify projects that reduce carbon emissions under the UN's Clean Development Mechanism, and serves as vice chair and chair of the Finance & Nominations Sub-Committee.
She was also director of the European Climate Foundation, managing director of the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels, and headed organisations such as the Centre for European Policy Studies and Wetlands International.
Planet Tracker also won two awards in Environmental Finance's Sustainable Investment Awards earlier this year.
