Investors face a catastrophic risk from the loss of the world’s natural resources spanning soil to flora, fauna and minerals that underpin the global economy and provide the world’s food, medicines and built environment.

Nature loss will impact economies and the financial system, yet nothing is being done at a global level to mitigate the losses because in many ways the issues remain invisible, said Ingrid Kukuljan, head of impact and sustainable investment at Federated Hermes Limited speaking during the Fiduciary Investors Symposium at Oxford University.

“Plants alone are responsible for around 40 per cent of the medicine in the western world,” she said.

Kukuljan pointed to recent research from Hungary’s central bank, MNB, conducted to help it and other central banks evaluate the impact of biodiversity loss. It revealed a profound impact on the economy, an increase natural disasters and hit to GDP from biodiversity loss.

Despite the fact the issues are frequently unseen, Kukuljan argued they are increasingly apparent. Like inflation in commodity prices in goods like cocoa, coffee and olive oil which she directly attributed to  issues in the supply chain as a consequence of natural disasters.

She said fiduciary capital is not flowing into strategies to stem its loss.

“Biodiversity is much bigger than climate, but there is a lack of understanding,” she said.

The world needs to change how we live and eat, and she pointed to sector specific opportunities for investors in food production and manufacturing.

Moreover, the market is beginning to price in biodiversity gains. For example, before the “Trump trade” Federated Hermes’ nature-focused equity investment fund of biodiversity champions with no tech exposure has provided strong risk adjusted returns, only trailing MSCI World “by 100 bps.”

Kukuljan said the fund has done well because the businesses in the portfolio are exposed to huge secular growth factors.

“You can make money by investing in solutions,” she said. She also sounded the alarm on not putting capital to work to protect biodiversity.

“If you don’t start investing now there won’t be any returns in ten years because the degradation will be so high. Take it seriously from a fiduciary duty point of view.”

Oxford endowment focuses on natural capital

Integrating nature at the £6 billion Oxford Endowment Fund is in its early stages. Eighty per cent of the portfolio is invested in an externally managed equity allocation and a small allocation to rural land in the mixed property portfolio is long-term tenanted to farmers. However, in a recent push to meaningfully integrate nature in a larger allocation, the investor acquired a 7,000- acre estate in Scotland in 2020 where it is developing a long-term multi-faceted strategy encompassing financial, environmental and societal returns spanning peatland restoration, woodland creation and sustainable tourism.

“Our focus is on maximising the natural capital,” said Antonia Coad, head of sustainability, Oxford University Endowment Management.

The endowment has already seen returns from its natural capital investment. For example carbon credits from the peatland restoration project have been generated to boost value creation for the estate.

The endowment is also involved in a more niche nature investment in its venture portfolio, including an opportunity to help mitigate the impact of micro plastics. But Coad said it is difficult finding talented venture capital funds that are backing interesting innovation with a biodiversity impact.

In public equity, the endowment has backed sustainable investor Osmosis Investment Management, investing both in the company and its fund.

Like the Oxford endowment, most investors begin integrating nature in real assets first.

Yet Kukuljan said publicly listed multinational corporations are the “biggest culprits” when it comes to destroying biodiversity and nature. She urged fixed income rating agencies to start taking biodiversity loss into consideration at a sovereign and corporate level.

She also stressed the strong connection between the ‘S’ of ESG and nature investment.

“If you want to invest in social issues you have to invest in biodiversity.”

TNFD reporting

The Oxford Endowment Fund has not begun integrating TNFD into its reporting. Instead the team is watching others to learn lessons and best practice from early adopters. Coad noted that it is helpful that it is not “an entirely new framework” but shares similarities and alignment with the TCFD. She added that it will be a helpful tool for engagement.

Federated Hermes has been working with the Natural History Museum to gather better data on biodiversity loss, looking at the key stress factors contributing to loss around waste, water, emissions and land use.

“The data is there but it is sparse,” she said.

Kukuljan called the TNFD a user friendly framework, and predicted that it will ultimately merge with the TCFD.  Similarly, she suggested that the biodiversity and climate COPs will merge. “I hope they unite the COPs; there is no need for two, or to silo biodiversity and climate.”

“Climate is one of the drivers of biodiversity loss and we shouldn’t separate the two. Forty per cent of all climate mitigation has to come from nature based solutions. If you don’t invest in nature, how are you going to reach climate targets?”

Recently in Cali, Colombia for the COP16 Biodiversity Summit she noted a heightened present of private market participants and finance ministers, representing a greater fiscal lever. Other encouraging signs of progress include the Global Biodiversity Framework, launched in 2022 and viewed as the Paris Agreement for Nature.

Although stewardship is an important element of investing in nature panellists reflected that capital allocation is a much greater lever than stewardship in creating change and Kukuljan also urged governments to reform lobbying laws. Positively, federal and state laws in the US help protect biodiversity and Japan has become a global leader in stemming biodiversity loss.

Regeneration will become a key investment theme in the future according to Gabriel Micheli, senior investment manager, thematic equities, Pictet Asset Management.

Speaking at the Fiduciary Investors Symposium at Oxford University, Micheli said the planet has lost around three quarters of its species/life over the past 50 years. Something he called a “staggering loss.”

“Nature provides the services we take for granted, but the the world is becoming less resilient,” he said.

Pictet Asset Management’s experience in sustainable investment goes back two decades. The asset manager’s funds focused on water, the energy transition and land use have seen strong performance over the years and it has also developed a framework that measures corporate impact. However, many investors are less experienced in the space.

They are still focused on “first steps” like removing the damage of climate change via net zero targets, for example. He told delegates that they will have to go further than this to begin biodiversity regeneration and restoration, repairing what has been lost and making sure that the planet’s rebuilt resilience is kept.

He said that restoring biodiversity is dependent on local communities safeguarding and taking care of nature for the long term.

“In the end what matters is that people around [nature] take care of it and that people are empowered to protect it over time.”

The circular economy offers investors a huge opportunity, according to Micheli. Circularity currently accounts for just 7 per cent of the global economy but he forecasts that recycling will become “huge” over time. Other opportunities lie in regenerative agriculture where food groups like Nestle and Danone are already putting capital to work to transform how food is cultivated. Regenerative agriculture is more resilient, reduces tilling and uses less pesticides and more nature based solutions to ensure yields.

Oats or dairy?

One of the most important aspects of Pictet’s work integrating nature comes from measuring the impact of corporate actions and applying those changes to investment strategy.

Micheli pointed to analysis of the difference in biodiversity impact between oat (low) and cow (high) milk to highlight how impact analysis has grown to span the whole value chain. In this case, encompassing packaging to water and land use, and emissions.

The study between the different sources of milk allows investors to understand one company compared to another, he continued. It reveals that one product has a lower impact on biodiversity loss than another which will ultimately be favoured by consumers and policy makers. He said impact analysis allows investors to position for headwinds and benefit from tailwinds that will fan financial returns.

But gathering the data is complex. Analysis must take into account the different impact from land use in different geographies and navigate the lack of standardization in corporate reporting, and the fact companies use different metrics. He said a top-down approach to analysis is also accompanied by incorporating bottom-up corporate reporting.  He also stressed the importance of working with academics to delve into the research and add expertise.

Using these processes, the asset manager has classified the biodiversity dependency of all the companies in the MSCI World.

Micheli said that the food industry has the biggest impact on biodiversity. The data also reveals how companies evolve over time, revealing that some companies’ do reverse their negative impact on biodiversity. The data also allows investors to make projections for the future and pinpoint where the impact of biodiversity loss will be felt most keenly. He said that biodiversity loss happens all over the world because global corporations have an impact across the world.

Pictet does not measure biodiversity impact with ESG ratings. Although they are useful, he described ESG ratings as more of a risk management tool. “ESG is about how  [companies] operate and do it better,” he said.

Away from data gathering, delegates also discussed the challenge that many investors face because they don’t have a mandate to invest biodiversity. For many it means they are only exploring how to integrate biodiversity, and face capacity constraints. They hold real assets like farms and timberland but the focus is more on ESG than biodiversity.

Micheli countered that investing for impact adds value to any investment strategy; it helps identify companies that the market hasn’t seen and creates performance and alpha for investors. “This is the reason people do it,” he said.

Institutional investors who committed to net zero a while back now face a dramatically different world, including Brightwell Pensions which supported its client fund, the BT Pension Scheme (BTPS), to set an ambitious 2035 net-zero goal in 2020.

Since then, the world has been shaken by the pandemic and wars, and Brightwell has seen a significant shift in its stakeholder landscape. The asset manager has a different trustee board, and the population has turned sceptical about climate investment.

“Things are changing and for us the critical thing is to make it clear why we think [our net zero target] gives a better risk adjusted return. We are not doing it to save the world,” Morten Nilsson, chief executive of Brightwell Pensions said at the Fiduciary Investors Symposium at Oxford.

Brightwell’s net zero journey is marked by annual targets, backstopped by a belief that it is hard to predict how fast the pace of change might become and, therefore, it is important to prepare now. The focus is on real-world outcomes, and Nilsson said the team won’t turn down good investments just because a company doesn’t have a 2050 net zero target.

Robeco has developed a model that tracks corporate net zero and transition plans across the asset manager’s entire investment universe. Lucian Peppelenbos, climate strategist at Robeco, explained how the model charts companies in terms of carbon efficiency in their sector, and signposts how likely a company is to deliver on its targets over time.

The model explores the governance sitting behind a company, and if climate strategy is embedded.

“We look at the track record in reducing emission and green revenue and capex,” he said. For companies with high emissions, the model translates the capex spend to analyse the surplus or gap in capex,” he said.

“It tells us about the ambition and credibility.”

Ambitious companies pass into Robeco’s “green zone” signposting an improvement in their transition plans, where they are taking action and a clear view of the opportunity to allocate capital.

Prevailing issues

Peppelenbos added that “hardly any energy companies” are in the green zone with a credible transition plan. Industrials have stronger transition plans, particularly sectors like cement in emerging markets. He also noted that the tech sector, once lauded as the net zero leader, is reneging on its commitments because of the demand for energy to fuel data centres feeding AI. “On their websites you don’t see net zero,” he said.

Nilsson said that Brightwell has seen some of the most encouraging changes in real estate, noting that green real estate achieves higher rental incomes.

The session reflected on the importance of fiduciary duty around climate investment. For many investors, fiduciary duty only allows “a little bit” of impact or climate solutions.” Much of the investment in net zero has come with the expectation that public policy will drive the transition yet public policy has stalled.

Much of the investment in net zero was based on the idea that investors would be in the right position when government policy starts to drive the transition. However, this is not happening, and the policy position remains out of kilter whereby net zero investors are front-running behind the policy proposition. Delegates heard that the certainty of a net zero future is now in doubt.

Peppelenbos stated the need for policy, noting that Robeco is front-running net zero policies based on risk/return considerations.

US public asset owners are not mandated to integrate sustainability. Nor does Brazil have public policy demands on its funds – only 13 of the 400 public pension plans in Brazil have joined the PRI.

Panellists reflected on the importance of public and private partnerships in the transition, noting that governments need to work more with private capital.

“They need money and we have it,” said Nilsson.

But he noted that it is difficult for investors to trust policymakers. It is vitally important for investors to be able to pass on rising costs to consumers. But referencing how investors lost money in UK utility Thames Water (an asset heavily impacted by climate change) he said someone “has to pay” for assets to be investable.

“Political risk not to be underestimated in all of this,” he concluded.

The US is only powerful enough to fight a war on one front and fading US power and military muscle has huge ramifications for the rest of the world.

Speaking at the Fiduciary Investors Symposium at Oxford, leading global affairs scholar Stephen Kotkin, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute, Stanford University and Birkelund Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, warned delegates that although the US remains the most powerful country in history, it is less capable of applying power at the necessary level.

The US is in the process of retrenching to hone resources on a potential war with China.

“America no longer has the wherewithal to fulfil its commitments,” he said.

The US accounts for 5 per cent of the global population and 25 per cent of global GDP. It holds 50 per cent of global military capability and companies in Silicon Valley are global leaders on innovation. But Kotkin said the US only has the power to fight one war, and reflected on the mismatch between the demands on US power and the inability of the government to meet those demands.

The US is particularly stymied by its “hair-raising” level of debt for which Kotkin said the government has no solution.

“We are undermining US power from within. We are doing it to ourselves,” he said.

The realisation that America can only fight one major war in a single field is reflected in the absence of a defence industrial base. America’s military commitments remain and are expanding, but it has no ability to meet them.

Yet global stability rests on US power. Post-WW2 Europe has been built on the basis of never having to fight a war again. Today, Europe is under pressure to re-arm, but Kotkin warned Europe will have to change its DNA for this to happen. Europe and other “middle powers” like Japan are reliant on America’s nuclear umbrella. Today America is increasingly saying that it is incumbent on these countries to defend the peace and prosperity going forward.

Kotkin warned that if the US goes to war with China, US support of Europe will disappear.

“US assets in Europe will be gone. There will be nothing but the nuclear umbrella,” he said.

He warned that Russia would be set free by the collapse of NATO but suggested that Europe could form a mini-NATO to defend itself. He singled out Poland, Sweden and Finland as potential leaders.

Kotkin reflected on Obama’s legacy to illustrate America’s fading power. He said Obama wanted to retrench, but got into forever wars in the Middle East by doubling down in Afghanistan, and overseeing failing strategy in Syria and Libya. These wars were constant demands on American power, even at a time Obama recognised the demand on US power superseded its capability. Now, Trump has reduced the Cold War to China.

Kotkin warned that a US-China war “is the end of the world as we know it”. More than the humanitarian tragedy of Ukraine or Gaza, he said a US-China war would involve unprecedented destruction. China has built up massive military capability, and he pointed to the country’s population of 50 million 18-25-year-old men with the capacity to fight.

Never before have China and the US been this powerful at the same time. China observed the Japanese and South Korean model, growing rich by exporting to the US market and building its middle class. The US thought that China would be a responsible stakeholder in the international system yet China doesn’t want to exist in a US-dominated world.

Kotkin compared today’s challenges to the 1930s when multiple conflicts like Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia, Hitler’s marching troops into the Rhineland and Japan’s seizing Manchuria acted as a precursor to WW2. Today those conflicts are wars in Ukraine, the Middle East, and China’s growing presence in the South China Sea. Although driven regionally, he said global war begins when regional conflicts come together. “It’s only after it happens that it becomes obvious,” he said.

Kotkin said that the tragedy in Gaza and Ukraine is existential only for the people being killed; these wars do not represent geopolitical risk. He said that Israel is standing up to the expansion of Iranian proxy power, but that Israel will struggle to consolidate its gains and win the peace.

However, if the US and China go to war, the global economy will no longer function the way it does, with profound implications for whole cities and industries.

KEY Issues coming together

Kotkin said that the world’s attempts to solve the climate crisis have failed. International meetings led to governments making promises they haven’t kept in a “pantomime bluff” most recently manifest in Azerbaijan, its most “grotesque version” yet.

“This is now where the solution is going to come from,” he said, arguing that the solution to climate change will ultimately come from technology.

Meanwhile, tech companies that pledged net zero have now erased their promise because they are consuming huge amounts of power to drive the data centres supporting AI, in “another bluff.”

“Demand for power and energy is only going up,” he said.

Kotkin said social media was corrosive and elevates the fringe into the mainstream. Fringe voices that promote falsehood and extremism were always present, but less visible. He said that the business model of social media is to destroy free and open societies that cannot censor and control: when they try to they just make the problem worse.

Reflecting on the challenges for investors to prepare for a Trump presidency, he said the man himself “has never prepared for anything” and will run a government based on improvisation. “It’s hard to predict where it will go,” he said.

Kotkin reflected on the challenge Trump faces in withdrawing from Ukraine. Trump is mindful of the harm Biden’s poorly managed withdrawal from Afghanistan did to his ratings. “Americans don’t like getting involved in wars, but they hate being on the losing side,” he said.

He attributed much of Trump’s election victory to the electorate seeking to punish the Democrats and an enduring pattern of incumbents being thrown out. Some democratic policies were particularly unpopular like decriminalising the border and the inflationary consequences of policy.

“Voters can’t get what they want so they can punish what’s in front of them,” he concluded.

Allocating capital to net zero opportunities doesn’t mean investors are prepared to give to charity. While many fiduciary investors are interested in tapping into the energy-transition mega-theme, or are simply trying to meet their ESG mandates, ultimately the investments have to generate returns for their beneficiaries. 

At the Fiduciary Investors Symposium, Cameron Hepburn, Battcock Professor of Environmental Economics at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford, said when people say there is a massive investment opportunity in transitioning to net zero, what they mean is “there is a massive need for investment to get to net zero”.  

“Some of it is an opportunity…but quite a lot of [it] is an opportunity to lose a lot of money,” he told the symposium at Oxford. 

In a universe of potential transition solutions, Hepburn said investors should at least look at them with these filters: is the investment technologically sensible; is it economically viable and attractive; is it acceptable to the public; and does it offer sustainable investment returns? 

Hydrogen fuel cell cars are an example of a technology that doesn’t make sense, Hepburn said, as they only convert approximately 30 per cent of the incoming electricity to propulsion at the wheels, whereas an EV has close to an 80 per cent conversion. The same applies to hydrogen boilers, which use six times as much electricity as heat pumps to deliver the UK’s heating demand (70 gigawatts). 

Another part of the story is understanding the economic progress of technologies. One common argument against deploying clean energy on a mass scale is that it’s too expensive, Hepburn said, but data suggests its unit of cost has been on a steady decline over the past decade.  

Meanwhile, costs of oil, coal and gas are highly volatile and lack long-term trends. 

“This is not to say there aren’t lots of smart people in these spaces doing clever things…but what they’re achieving, in a sense, is they are counteracting yield declines, as we have to dig up difficult sources of oil and gas in harder places,” Hepburn said, adding that these actions do not result in secular cost declines.  

“As of 2023, wind and solar have now added more energy – not just electricity, but energy – than oil. 

“Don’t get excited. We’re still like 70 to 80 per cent fossil fueled, and we’re talking about incremental change, but we’re on the beginning of that exponential curve.” 

However, Hepburn stressed that the combination of good technology, economics and public options does not always amount to investments with good returns. Solar is a good example where it is hard for investors to make money despite having all three advantages, he said, because the market is fiercely competitive and must deal with “distortionary tariffs” from certain countries. 

There are some questions for investors to consider if they are seeking “rent” in parts of the transition value chain, Hepburn said. These are things like: will my technology be outcompeted by the next iteration; can I invest in the infrastructure of transition technologies; how concerned am I about supply chain risks; does the political environment view climate change as a serious problem; and how much pushback will I receive from incumbent providers? 

“As an example, [for] those who get very excited that the cost of renewables is now cheaper than the cost of fossils, forget that,” Hepburn said. 

“To win in total, you are going to have to go all the way down the supply stack. 

“You can dig out oil and gas between 5 and 10 bucks a barrel from Saudi Arabia, so the fact that you’re competitive at 60 [dollars] doesn’t mean that’s the immediate end of oil.”