Deep Dive: Stewardship in Practice: Addressing Nature-Related Risks

Background

Nature loss is increasingly recognised as a systemic risk for long-term investors. It reaches portfolios through disrupted production, weaker cash flows and impaired collateral, and through regulation, permits and litigation. Because these effects run across sectors and regions, diversification offers limited protection. That makes nature a stewardship issue. Central banks and supervisors have reached a similar conclusion: the NGFS Conceptual Framework on nature-related financial risks (2024) describes these risks as relevant for financial stability.

Recognition of this is growing, but for many investors the practical question is still open: how does an understanding of nature-related risk turn into effective stewardship? This Deep Dive moves past commitments and frameworks to stewardship as it is practised today. StePs sets out the systemic-risk context. Datura shows which nature-related dependencies, impacts and risks matter for engagement, and which frameworks, research, data and tools help investors act on them. Three international investors then each present one concrete case. A practitioner panel closes the session: what works, what does not, where investors have real influence and what still needs to change.

Target Audience

Professionals already working in investment, stewardship or sustainable finance who want to see how nature-related systemic risk translates into investor practice.

·       Asset owners and asset managers

·       Stewardship and active ownership teams

·       Responsible investment and risk specialists

Also open to civil society, researchers, policymakers, advisers and journalists

Learning Outcomes

·                Why nature loss is a systemic financial risk and a stewardship challenge, not only a company-level issue

·                Which nature-related dependencies, impacts and risks matter for investors, and what data can and cannot show

·                How different stewardship approaches compare: direct, collaborative and through asset managers

·                When each tool fits, and what investors have learned about their limits

·                Practical next steps for bringing nature into their own stewardship programme

This is a practitioner-focused Deep Dive, not a technical training on biodiversity or TNFD. It sits between an introductory nature-finance webinar and specialist risk training. The session connects systemic risk, nature expertise, investor action and practitioner learning, so participants leave with both the context and concrete examples to strengthen their own stewardship practice.