Nature Action 100, the first global investor engagement initiative to address the urgent crisis of nature and biodiversity loss around the world, has published a new field guide to equip investors with insights and resources to inform their nature engagements with companies.  

Exploring Nature Impacts and Dependencies: A Field Guide to Eight Key Sectors was developed by the sustainability nonprofit Ceres on behalf of Nature Action 100. Ceres co-leads the initiative’s global Secretariat and Corporate Engagement Working Group, alongside IIGCC.  

The guide provides an overview for investors, including the more than 200 institutional investors participating in Nature Action 100, into how business activities impact and depend on nature across eight sectors. They include biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, chemicals, consumer goods retail, food, food and beverage retail, forestry and packaging, household and personal products, and metals and mining. Nature Action 100 investors are prioritizing these sectors for engagements due to their importance for reversing nature and biodiversity loss by 2030.  

The guide includes individual factsheets on each sector which explain the main industry activities associated with the sector and the nature-related impacts and dependencies stemming from those activities. It builds on Ceres’ Global Assessment of Private Sector Impacts on Water, which describes the water-related impacts and dependencies for the biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, chemicals, food, forestry and packaging, and metals and mining sectors. 

“We created the new field guide to serve as a valuable resource for investors as they deepen their engagements with companies to manage the escalating risks of nature and create long-term value,” said Meryl Richards, program director, food and forests at Ceres. “As impacts and dependencies vary widely by sector, this guide lays out what those are for each sector and the meaningful actions that companies in those sectors can take to mitigate nature and biodiversity loss.”  

Since direct engagement with Nature Action 100 companies kicked off last year, over 200 investor participants, representing over $28.6 trillion in assets under management or advice, are engaging 100 market-leading companies to drive urgent and necessary actions on nature. The participating investors have called on companies to take timely and necessary steps to protect and restore nature and ecosystems in line with the Nature Action 100 Investor Expectations of Companies.   

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To further support investor engagements, Nature Action 100 will release an annual benchmark analysis of corporate progress against these investor expectations. Specific benchmark indicators will be announced ahead of that release later this spring.