Agenda

Registration and morning coffee

Environmental Finance welcome address

Graham Cooper, Consulting Editor, Environmental Finance

Weighing up investor appetite for natural capital

• Results of The Nature Conservancy and Environmental Finance's survey is to assess financial institutions' interest in investing in natural capital

Sophie Trémolet, Water Security Director – Europe, The Nature Conservancy

KEYNOTE PANEL: Natural capital – why should investors care?

• What are natural capital and ecosystem services? How are they financially relevant?
• How do you put a value on natural capital?
• Is it a useful term for investors, or is it best understood thematically?
• Why it is natural capital material to investment portfolios? What are the risks and opportunities?
• Which investment mechanisms are best suited to natural capital?

Moderator: Graham Cooper, Consulting Editor, Environmental Finance

Panelists:
Danielle Carreira, Senior Specialist Manager, Environmental Issues, UN PRI
Andrew Mitchell, Co-Founder, Natural Capital Finance Alliance
Jo Pike, Chief Executive, Scottish Wildlife Trust
Agustin Silvani, Senior Vice President, Conservation Finance, Conservation International

PANEL: Understanding natural capital risk assessments and portfolio analysis

• Looking at impact (doing the right thing) versus dependencies (risks) – how does this inform investor approaches towards natural capital?
• How are risks best understood within the natural capital lens?
• Which assets/sectors most vulnerable?
• Where is the risk of stranded assets under the natural capital umbrella?
• What has been the evolution of economic benefits as a financial metric?
• How can natural capital be best integrated into a risk-return strategy/ESG weighting?
• How to measure risks in the supply chain

Moderator: 
Mark Gough, Executive Director, Capital Coalition

Panellists:
Peter Adriaens, Director, Center for Digital Infrastructure Finance; Professor, Environmental Engineering, Finance & Entrepreneurship, University of Michigan
Annelisa Grigg, Principal Specialist Business and Biodiversity Programme, UNEP-WCMC
Keyvan Macedo, Head of Climate Change & Environmental Impact, Natura 
Sara Minchin, Sustainable Finance and Corporate Risk Specialist, WWF-UK

CASE STUDY: Using private market impact strategies to address natural capital risks and opportunities

• Impact investing: positive outcomes aligned to investor interests
• Designing a credible impact management model
• What makes an investable project?
• What metrics and data are used? Are there gaps?
• Applying an impact measurement and management system

 Speaker: Shade Duffy, Director of Impact Management, AXA Investment Managers

THEMATIC SPOTLIGHT: Water

• Is this the natural capital asset that binds all other natural capital assets together?
• How are the environmental links between water and other assets understood and balanced?
• Where are the trade-offs?
• How do you put an investable value on something seen a human right?
• Understanding the materiality of water, risk assessments and scenario analysis
• Why does the use of nature-based solutions for water risk remain marginal?
• Water extraction permits: How successful are they and how is their use evolving?

Moderator:
Merylyn Hedger, Senior Research Associate, ODI

Panellists:
Sophie Trémolet, Water Security Director – Europe, The Nature Conservancy
Bianca Nijhof, Managing Director, Netherlands Water Partnership
Guy Thompson, Managing Director, EnTrade 

THEMATIC SPOTLIGHT: Forestry

• How can the value of forests be best realised beyond their timber value?
• How do you weigh up negative impacts on biodiversity and demonstrate wider benefits?
• What are the tools that help assess both this and value?
• How can such tools help build an investable product and measure impact?
• Why did Norway's oil fund come up with a no deforestation policy?
• Trading mechanisms and REDD for forests: how are such mechanisms being used to protect natural capital?

Moderator:
Olli Haltia, Senior Partner/CEO, Dasos Capital Oy

Panellists:
Andrew Heald, Technical Director, Confederation of Forest Industries
Darius Sarshar, Investment Director, SLM Partners
Pat Snowdon, Head of Economics and Woodland Carbon Code, Scottish Forestry

THEMATIC SPOTLIGHT: Agriculture/agro-ecology

• How can a radical rethink of land management and agricultural policy help combat biodiversity, soil quality and water loss?
• How and where are government policies supporting this? Is this creating investor opportunities?
• Why is soil health largely absent from equity and credit analysis and investable product metrics?
• What success have small scale agri-environment schemes had in the EU and the US?

Moderator:
Detlef Schoen, Managing Partner, NewAg Partners

Panellist:
Clément Chenost, Managing Director, The Moringa Partnership
Christian Didier, Nature and Sustainability Finance Director, Danone
Jeremy Moody, Secretary and Adviser, The Central Association of Agricultural Valuers (CAAV)
Daphne Yin, Senior Consultant, Indufor North America

PANEL: Implementing a natural capital investment strategy – best practice and tools for investors

• Can integrating natural capital improve returns?
• How can natural capital be integrated into portfolio theory? What tools can be used?
• To what extent is natural capital currently incorporated in ESG scores?
• How can the long-term benefits of investments in natural capital be resolved with shorter term investor outlooks?
• What can be learned from the evolution of other asset classes that were previously in similar nascent stages?

Moderator: Jim Totty, Managing Partner, Earth Capital

Panellists:
Simon Dent, Blue Investments Director, Mirova Natural Capital
Eoin Fahy, Head of Responsible Investing, KBI Global Investors
Robin Miller, Manager, Investor Engagement, Water, Ceres
Krista Patrick, Natural Capital Coordinator, GM Environment Team, Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA)
Agustin Silvani, Senior Vice President, Conservation Finance, Conservation International

PANEL: Unpicking impact, metrics and materiality

• Impact assessments: what tools are out there and who are they suitable for?
• Quality assurance and impact: how can you unify both under a natural capital banner?
• How essential is it to the mobilisation of investment?
• Which metrics could also lead and support flows of natural capital?
• The importance of flows in decision making
• Using reliance and risk to engage business investment
• How do we have to evolve accounting and financial models to eliminate economic externalities and impacts that do not value natural capital?
• How do data systems and technology play a role here?
• Examples of account balance sheets and investment style balance sheets

Moderator: Ece Özdemiroğlu, Founding Director, eftec

 Panellists:
Chris Brown, Vice President – Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability, Olam International
Andy Griffiths, Head of Value Chain Sustainability, Nestlé UK
Pernille Holtedahl, Principal, Blue Maia
Jason Sinden, Investment Director, Gresham House

PRESENTATION: Blended finance and the current status of global public investment in natural capital

• How can investors work with governments and development banks to access and fund natural capital projects?
• For which sectors and product types does blended finance best lend itself to?
• How much and what kind of public expenditure and investment is currently flowing to sustainable land use?
• What are the challenges in leveraging the private sector?
• Is blended finance part of the answer?

Speaker: Angela Falconer, Associate Director, Climate Finance Division, Climate Policy Initiative

PANEL: The global governance and legislative agenda – will it support the preservation of natural capital?

• How are policymakers approaching the topic of natural capital? What policies would support being able to adequately value natural capital?
• What are regulators doing to assess and understand natural capital risks?
• How does natural capital align with the SDGs? What are the direct and indirect ramifications for natural capital investors?
• Could the EU Sustainable Finance Action Plan be a game changer for natural capital?
• Will the NGFS incorporate natural capital?
• What has been the progress of the TNFD?

Moderator:
Kerry ten Kate, Director, Biodiversity Initiative, Forest Trends

Panellists:
Chris Hart, Senior Sustainable Finance Associate, Natural Capital Finance Alliance
Martin Lok, Deputy Director, Capitals Coalition
Ben Nelmes, Head of Public Policy, UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association
Dawn Slevin, Managing Director, ELS Europe
Thomas Verheye, Principal Advisor, Green Finance & Investment, European Commission – DG Environment

THEMATIC SPOTLIGHT: Biodiversity

• How is biodiversity loss an economic problem?
• Should the approach to biodiversity inform all other approaches to natural capital?
• What are the interlinking complexities that make this approach difficult?
• What are the options for rewards and returns for protecting biodiversity?
• The 'UN Decade on Biodiversity' and the EU's 'No Net Loss' biodiversity strategy – what has been achieved?
• Stantec case study: what could an investible project look like?
• Aligning putting a value on nature with sustaining biodiversity
• What triggers the investment and how can it be structured to attract investment?
• Trading mechanisms and biodiversity offsets: what is the potential here?

Moderator: Kerry ten Kate, Director, Biodiversity Initiative, Forest Trends

Panellists:
Eugenie Regan, IBAT Manager, IBAT Alliance
Jonathan Riggall, Director, Energy and Environment, Stantec
Boris Spassky, LDN Fund Investment Director, Mirova
Simon Zwagemakers, Chair, Working Group Biodiversity, Dutch Central Bank, Secretary to the Managing Board, NWB Bank

Close of conference and networking drinks reception