The last decade has witnessed an emerging number of tools, best-
management guidelines, indices and benchmarks that aim to
encourage the corporate world, including the financial services
sector, to take account of social, environmental and governance
issues. A large number of these tools and guidelines address
aspects such as climate change, waste and energy use. The issue
of biodiversity, however, has only recently started to be
addressed. This project aims 1) to provide an overview of the
guidelines, management systems, etc that have been developed so
far; 2) assess if there is any evidence that biodiversity is a
material risk for financial institutions (i.e. a business case);
3) gather opinions on the need/usefulness to develop a
biodiversity benchmark and based on these views develop a draft
framework which, at a later stage, can be used as a benchmark.
Biodiversity is often defined as the diversity within species,
between species and of ecosystems (CBD, article 2).Although
comprehensive, it might not alwa