Brazil is currently holding the G20 rotating presidency and the Embassy of Brazil in Berlin was the scene of a high-level workshop on “Disclosure on Nature and Biodiversity within the G20” organised by the G20 Sustainable Finance for Nature & People project, led by the Sustainable Finance Think Tank Climate & Company and the Post 2020 Biodiversity Framework EU Support project.
This official side event explored how the G20 can effectively support and uphold the targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), recently renamed The Biodiversity Plan. Its Target 15 “Businesses Assess, Disclose and Reduce Biodiversity-Related Risks and Negative Impacts”, in particular, which focuses on the implication of Businesses and Finance institutions, resonates with the role that the major world economies can play to protect nature.
More than 150 participants attended the event either online or on-site, bringing together an international audience from over 15 countries. The multi-sectoral audience, comprising representatives from the public and private sectors, academia, and civil society, underscores the importance and wide relevance of this discussion for various stakeholders.
Key moments and takeaways
The hybrid event kicked off with a welcome session led by the Ambassador of Brazil to Germany, His Excellency Roberto Jaguaribe and introducing the two panels themes.
During the welcome session, H. David Cooper, Acting Executive Secretary of the UN CBD, noted that “governments need to put in place the regulatory frameworks to require large and transnational businesses and financial institutions to report as foreseen in Target 15.”
The importance of the GBF and the challenges associated with its implementation were pointed out by keynote speakers Mr. Matias Cardomingo from the Brazilian Ministry of Finance and Dr. Braulio Dias from the Brazilian Ministry of Environment. Key takeaways included Brazil’s progress through a major initiative led by CEBDS (Brazilian Business Council for Sustainable Development) with a particular focus on the Target 15, and the great momentum for moving forward on topics such as sustainability reporting and nature-based solutions through this year’s G20 Sustainable Finance Working Group.
The first panel titled “How can the G20 support the successful implementation & adoption of international disclosure frameworks & standards?”, gathered Theresa Spandel, senior analyst at Climate & Company, Frederik Buchholz, from the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and Carolin Eichhofer, from DHL Group and the guests invited for the discussion session Miguel Pérez Ludena, Research Lead in Standards and Yuqing Cheng, researcher at the Institute of Finance and Sustainability (IFS) and allowed for an exchange of different perspectives from the corporate sector, research, and standards representatives.
They all agreed that it is crucial to improve alignment and coherence among disclosure standards and frameworks and the need to move towards mandatory disclosure. Although G20 countries are increasingly adopting climate-related disclosure requirements, there is a necessity to promote interoperability between standards and frameworks and to extend the focus beyond climate. Sustainability disclosure became common business; however, sector standards are in the early stages and G20 could support advancing on this approach. There is a recognized need for more pilot studies on disclosure that could be supported and/or conducted in the G20 context. This forum should also support knowledge sharing and capacity building on disclosure.
On the second panel titled “Disclosure on biodiversity & nature: challenges & opportunities in practice”, Vanessa Pereira from CEBDS, Christian Borgen from Bayer, and Ingmar Jürgens from Climate & Company, besides two guests invited for the discussion session Alessandra Melis, Senior Manager – TNFD and Yuqing Cheng – for a second time – had an exchange about what is working and what still needs to be done in this regard.
Workshop outcomes and insights
The main outcomes of the discussion reflected a consensus on the importance and necessity of disclosure. Discussions pointed out that the challenge lies not so much with the data itself, but with analytics. G20 nations combine different perspectives on biodiversity & nature: upstream and downstream and these topics connect different stakeholders, nations, and business along the value chains.
Therefore, this forum plays a crucial role in promoting transparency, alignment, and interoperability among disclosure standards and frameworks. It’s not a question of reinventing the wheel, but of putting all the pieces of the puzzle together, in this case, disclosure standards and frameworks. Great examples of initiatives, such as the one presented by CEBDS to support progress in the implementation of GBF target 15, should be recognized by the G20 and used as an example for other countries.
G20 economies: powerful agents of change
The G20 has a key role in fostering biodiversity and nature disclosure with different opportunities to take, such as promoting standards and frameworks alignment in G20 countries, and also approaching reporting from a sector perspective.
Upcoming events to continue this high-level discussion will be announced. Besides capacity-building activities, this project is also preparing T20 policy briefs and technical notes on the topic of disclosure for nature and biodiversity that will be published soon.
You may find more information about this project here.
