Fonds Objectif Biodiversité
Learn how CDP data is central to the strategy of the “Fonds Objectif Biodiversité”, a €100 million listed biodiversity fund managed by Mirova.
Mirova, a subsidiary of Natixis Investment Managers, was selected by a consortium of 11 prominent French institutional investors – including Abeille Assurances (Aéma Group), BNP Paribas Cardif, BPCE Assurances, the Caisse des Dépôts, CNP Assurances, EDF Gestion, MAIF, MACIF (Aéma Group), Malakoff Humanis, Société Générale Assurances, and Crédit Agricole Assurances – to manage the “Fonds Objectif Biodiversité”, a €100 million listed biodiversity fund.
With an initial duration of five years, this listed fund will primarily target small and medium-sized European companies, aiming to support the transition to sustainable business models and invest in innovative solutions that reduce the pressures on biodiversity.
The integration of environmental disclosure data from CDP is central to the fund’s strategy, emphasizing the pivotal role of data-driven insights in responsible investment.
Mirova uses CDP’s corporate datasets – spanning disclosures from over 23,000 companies, including climate change, water security, biodiversity, deforestation, and plastic pollution – to inform its investment strategy and evaluate companies’ dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities related to biodiversity.
Mirova and CDP are now cooperating on building dedicated methodologies to assess corporates’ nature transition maturity based on samples of the most relevant CDP data. This would enable the quantitative assessment of corporates on a maturity scale.
The framework aligns with TNFD requirements on governance, strategy, stakeholder engagement, and performance; and coheres with thematic collaborative engagement platforms on deforestation, water stewardship and pollutions (for example, PRI’s Spring).
Another workstream relates to the improvement of the minimum standards of the fund, which are meant to exclude corporates whose activities are detrimental to biodiversity without intending to remediate impacts. Accordingly CDP and Mirova have identified indicators enabling the screening-out of detrimental activities in biodiversity-sensitive areas and the use of deforestation-linked commodities.
CDP helps the investment team understand the breadth and depth of reported data provided, how to interpret and apply this data in line with standards, frameworks, and initiatives, and its assumptions and limitations. Both Mirova and CDP view biodiversity as a cross-cutting issue that requires a holistic approach – one that integrates considerations across the drivers of biodiversity loss, including deforestation and other natural ecosystem conversion, water abstraction and pollution, plastic production and waste, and climate change.
In addition to CDP data, Mirova will utilize complementary tools such as sectoral materiality assessment frameworks, footprinting metrics supporting comprehensive assessment over the value chain, and geospatial analysis to help quantify local direct impacts.
CDP will provide updates and further interpretation of its data, thereby improving the analysis of the maturity of corporates’ nature transition. This supports Mirova in building a portfolio that complies with the two-pronged objective of financial performance and meaningful ecological outcomes.
To uphold scientific integrity and transparency, a dedicated scientific committee comprising biodiversity and sustainable finance experts oversees the fund. CDP is also represented in this committee, whose role is to provide guidance on the theory of change, methodological strategy, development of impact indicators and corporate engagement principles, which will help evaluate the biodiversity performance of the portfolio.
The “Fonds Objectif Biodiversité” stands as a model for integrating comprehensive environmental data into sustainable finance. Through close collaboration with CDP and the scientific committee, Mirova is demonstrating how the strategic use of environmental data enables investment strategy to contribute to global biodiversity targets, such as the reduction of corporate footprints, mobilization of funding and mitigation of pollution, and offers a scalable blueprint for future schemes.