On 14 October, the Green Circle ‘Green Healthy City’ partnership was launched. Its mission: to radically green some of the Netherlands’ largest cities. NextGreen facilitated a workshop about the financial tools that can be used for this.
At a series of four virtual workshops on biodiversity ‘Engagement with companies’, members of the Finance@Biodiversity Community have been sharing experiences. The last workshop, held on 4 October, highlighted best practices by leading companies.
A new guide explains how financial institutions can engage with the CBD COP15 process and push for an ambitious Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. The Finance for Biodiversity Foundation, founded by NextGreen and de Horde Advies, contributed to the guide together with other partners.
Since January 2021, Anne-Marie has been working as the community manager financial sector within Climate Proof Together (0.1 FTE). Within this network for and by professional ‘climate workers’, Anne-Marie tackles climate adaptation issues with financial institutions and their umbrella organizations. This builds on NextGreen’s previous work on the Analysis of Finance and Climate Adaptation. One of the first activities is organizing a lunch lecture on September 13th, 12-13 o’clock.
One lesson of the past year is that it’s only by working together that we can get through a crisis. At NextGreen, we enjoy working with the dialogue method, as given to us by the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber.
For Buber, equality is an essential basis for productive cooperation. Dialogue is a key concept for him. In a dialogue, speaking and listening are in balance with each other and attention is focused on perspectives and responses. Through this interaction, the dialogue partners can connect to their deeper sources. Hidden wisdom can be discovered by speaking and listening together. Through the interaction and the process of searching for answers together, creativity is released and new insights can emerge that we can build on. The dialogue therefore becomes greater than just the sum of its parts.
Together with the EU Finance@Biodiversity Community and the signatories of the Finance for Biodiversity Pledge, we have developed a Guide to measuring biodiversity for financial institutions. As the loss of biodiversity becomes ever more urgent, financial institutions are looking for ways to quantify the impact of their finance and investment activities on biodiversity. The Guide on biodiversity measurement approaches provides a comprehensive overview of the biodiversity measurement tools that are currently in use and underway. The Guide will be presented in a webinar on April 1st, 2-3pm CET.
Rooftop Garden Maandag Rotterdam Blaak. Design and realisation: Boekel Tuin en Landschap
In order to help municipalities and water boards to determine their policy mix to promote climate adaptation on private land, the working group decision support is developing a framework.
There are many policy tools that municipalities and water boards can use to promote climate adaptation on private land. And there are even more digital tools that are meant to facilitate the choice between the different policy tools. The working group decision support is therefore developing an overarching framework that will bring together these tools in a structured way.
On September 25 at 15:00 CEST, 26 financial institutions will launch their Finance for Biodiversity Pledge during the United Nations Nature for Life Hub. Don’t miss it! In the Pledge, the participating banks, investors and other financial institutions will commit to start working for biodiversity. They will also call upon other financial institutions and heads of state to do the same, so that together we can help reverse global biodiversity loss.
Behind the scenes at NextGreen, we are working hard together with Anita de Horde to prepare for this historic event. The new website is now online and a film maker is busy creating videos in which the CEOs of these institutions make their statements for the launch.
Over the next few months, NextGreen – commissioned by ‘Climate-Proof Together’ – will be working on an inventory of ongoing initiatives in the field of climate risks and climate resilience in the financial sector. The aim is to create a clear overview of current developments and to identify the next steps that financial institutions can take in conjunction with real estate developers, property owners and companies in order to adapt their policy and projects to integrate climate resilience.
The development of a ‘common language’ is important in the interaction between financial institutions and municipalities and water boards. It will make their dialogue on climate-proof design more effective for developers, property owners and companies, and it will provide a quicker insight into joint solutions.
How can we strike the right balance between the many demands on scarce space for living, energy production, health and nature? And how can we do this within a municipality’s environmental vision? The implementation of the Dutch Environment and Planning Act requires municipalities to view the physical environment from an integrated perspective and to describe how the related social policies mesh together. At the request of the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG), NextGreen facilitated working sessions with four municipalities in order to co-create a framework for striking the right balance, based on their practical experiences and using the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a compass.
