Mirova Manages New €100M Fund For Biodiversity Solutions

The sustainable investment firm Mirova was chosen to run a newly launched fund by the group of French institutional investors called "Objectif biodiversité," which is oriented towards giving impetus to sustainable business transitions and biodiversity preservation. The 100 million euro fund, initially thought to be five years, will mainly focus on supporting small and medium-sized European companies on innovative solutions that are presumed to mitigate negative impacts on biodiversity.

This is supported by the leading French institutions that have joined together in the form of Abeille Assurances (Aéma Group), BNP Paribas Cardif, BPCE Assurances, Caisse des Dépôts, CNP Assurances, EDF Gestion, MAIF, MACIF (Aéma Group), Malakoff Humanis, Société Générale Assurances, and Crédit Agricole. This consortium had earlier in the year launched the "Fonds Objectif Biodiversité" initiative with Af2i (Association Française des Investisseurs Institutionnel), laying a collaborative framework to tackle some of the toughest biodiversity issues through strategic investment. Mirova, working closely with Af2i, will take a very central role in managing assets belonging to the fund and focusing them on enterprises whose goals converge with biodiversity conservation.

The investment decisions in companies would be based on data available from CDP, the environmental disclosure platform that aggregates and shares information on climate-related risks and opportunities from over 23,000 reporting entities worldwide. Data coming from CDP is highly important in providing insights regarding the exposure of companies to environmental risks as well as performance in reducing adverse impacts on biodiversity. Mirova will leverage CDP's data in grading companies on environmental dimensions that include climate change resilience, water security, deforestation, biodiversity, and plastic pollution. The firm will also get specific training by the experts at CDP in increasing the effectiveness of the data-driven approach. That is to say that it should be able to identify the risk management practices by the investment candidates and assess its ability to contribute to the goals of biodiversity positively.

Hervé Guez, Global Head of Listed Assets at Mirova, said: "We are pleased to be entrusted with managing this pioneering fund, which reflects our commitment to preserving biodiversity and to our responsible investment expertise. We believe that biodiversity will be a key topic for the coming years.". He emphasized the fact that the strategy would involve both investment in SMEs, who can offer sustainable solutions, but also be actively engaging with large corporations on the incorporation of biodiversity as a transformative issue in their business models.