Fidelity International has unveiled its Nature Roadmap, a strategy for integrating nature conservation into its investment and stewardship activities.
According to ESG Today, the highlight of this initiative is a new voting policy to be implemented from 2024, whereby Fidelity will vote against companies that do not meet specific deforestation-related practices and disclosure standards. This decisive move follows Fidelity’s commitment at the 2021 COP26 UN climate conference, where they pledged to eliminate forest-risk agricultural commodity-driven deforestation activities in their investment strategies by 2025.
Further, Fidelity is a proud foundation member of the Finance for Biodiversity pledge, joining forces with over 150 financial institutions managing assets over $22 trillion. This collaboration aims to protect and restore biodiversity through financing activities and investments.
Jenn-Hui Tan, Chief Sustainability Officer at Fidelity International, emphasized the criticality of preserving biodiversity and ecosystems, noting that their loss poses a systematic risk to capital markets. Tan outlined the firm’s commitment to natural capital conservation and detailed the various tools and approaches Fidelity will employ to integrate nature into their investment and stewardship processes.
The Nature Roadmap includes robust governance and oversight of sustainability, integrating nature into Fidelity’s existing ESG tools, and leveraging external tools and data. It also emphasizes embedding nature in the firm’s sustainable investment framework and engaging in policy and system-wide stewardship initiatives.
Tan further elaborated on Fidelity’s approach, highlighting their focus on making a difference through direct corporate dialogue and industry collaboration. This involves shaping policies and regulatory environments to value natural capital and ecosystem services fairly.
Jenn-Hui Tan said, “The loss of natural capital is a systematic risk to capital markets, and as such, prioritising and contributing to the health and preservation of our biodiversity and ecosystems is essential.”
Tan added, “We seek to make a difference not only through direct corporate dialogue but in collaboration with the industry through system-wide stewardship, helping to shape an enabling policy and regulatory environment which places a fair value on natural capital and the ecosystem services from which we all benefit.”
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