Impact Investing: &Green's Strategy for Sustainable Agriculture and Biodiversity Conservation

Streamlining Investment Process with Effective Net Gain Framework

Client's Vision

&Green aims to revolutionize conventional agriculture by integrating sustainable practices that protect and restore tropical forests and peatlands. Their goal is to achieve net positive outcomes for forests and biodiversity while ensuring deforestation-free agricultural supply chains in a commercially viable manner.   

By creating a Forest & Biodiversity Net Gain Framework, &Green’s goal is to enhance its sustainability policy to guarantee that all its projects result in positive forest and biodiversity outcomes.

Project purpose

Forest & Biodiversity Net Gain Framework

The Forest & Biodiversity Net Gain Framework required by &Green was aimed at decoupling agricultural supply chains from deforestation. To ensure positive outcomes for forests and biodiversity in their projects, the framework had to comply with IFC’s (International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank Group) Performance Standards and &Green's own No Deforestation, No Peat, and No Exploitation (NDPE) policy.

Michael Schlup, Impact and E&S Director at Sail Ventures, &Green’s investment advisor, stated, “Understanding the biodiversity impact of the projects we finance is fundamental to our objective of helping transform conventional agriculture through sustainable practice.” 

Our Role

Developing a Forest & Biodiversity Net Gain Framework aligned with both IFC Performance Standard 6 and the organisation’s existing sustainability framework. 

Key Deliverables

• Developing a Biodiversity Risk Screening System 

• Standardising the Due Diligence Process 

• Implementing a streamlined investment process in line with IFC PS6 

The Challenge 

Given the immense dependency of the agricultural supply chain on nature, developing a framework for &Green that complies with IFC Performance Standards and its NDPE policy, delinking major agricultural commodity supply chains from deforestation was a complex task. Also, the existing practices throughout these chains required coordination and monitoring. 

Our Approach

Biodiversity Risk Screening System and Due Diligence

To support the design and rollout of an IFC PS6-streamlined investment process,  &Green challenged The Biodiversity Consultancy to develop a biodiversity risk screening system to enable early detection of nature and biodiversity risks – including the applicability of No Net Loss/Net Gain and PS6 requirements on supply chains.

The screening system categorises a potential deal based on the level of risk using advanced global biodiversity datasets such as the Species Threat Abatement and Restoration (STAR) metric and helped determine the appropriate scope of subsequent due diligence required for potential loan scenarios. 

Outcome

The new framework integrates supply chain and site-based assessments. This integration is crucial for maximiszing &Green’s potential to effect change in high-value biodiversity landscapes. The streamlined process ensures that nature's outcomes meet the stated goals of the investment, balancing robustness and process efficiency. This science-based investment process puts &Green at the frontier of impact investing, driving credible environmental returns at an international scale.