Biodiversity progress update for our investments
NN Group is committed to addressing biodiversity and nature loss in our proprietary investment portfolio. To this end, we have developed a Nature Action Plan and conducted a pilot biodiversity study for one of our residential real estate projects. Together with other collaborations that we recently communicated, these steps demonstrate our commitment to incorporating biodiversity considerations into our investment process and to promoting sustainable practices in our investment portfolio.
Nature Action Plan for proprietary assets
Early 2024, we published a biodiversity white paper to highlight material biodiversity impacts and dependencies in our corporate investment portfolio, as well as key milestones towards 2030. Since then, we continued to develop a Nature Action Plan, and initiation targets for 2025, as part of our commitment to the Finance for Biodiversity Pledge. Our plan includes the following initiatives:
· Responsible investment governance and education: We will enhance internal awareness and knowledge on biodiversity and nature by providing training sessions and learning modules for investment experts and other departments such as Finance and Risk. Potential topics include the materiality of nature to investment portfolios, target setting, and best practices.
· Risk management framework for nature: We plan to expand our biodiversity risk assessment for investment to other asset classes starting with real estate. We will also engage with external asset managers to enhance oversights of biodiversity impacts as part of ESG integration.
· Further actions to measure, halt and reverse nature loss: We will explore approaches for baseline measurement and ‘nature solutions’, develop a nature policy and strengthen our biodiversity engagement strategy.
We aim to report progress on these initiation targets by early 2026, as we prepare to set potential portfolio targets on nature after the completion of our initiation targets.
Collaborations for biodiversity mitigation
In alignment with our Nature Action Plan, we actively participate in various nature-related collaborative engagements, such as Nature Action 100 and the Ceres Valuing Water Initiative. We recently contributed to a report on enhancing investors’ understanding of water-related risks. We also joined a global call to action on biodiversity, recognising that governments play a crucial role in accelerating mitigation efforts through establishing national targets on nature, developing disclosure regulations for companies, implementing regulations to protect nature, and scaling up finance for biodiversity restoration
Biodiversity study for a residential real estate project
In 2024, we conducted a pilot biodiversity study for one of our residential real estate projects in Amsterdam with the support of our external real estate manager CBRE and sustainability consultancy firm Rebel. The pilot study assessed the environmental benefits of four different intervention scenarios, such as planting options for courtyard garden, green roof and green balconies, replacing pavement with vegetation. As part of the building completion in September 2024, we implemented the measures from one of the scenarios.
Marieke van Kamp, Head of Private Markets, says: “This study demonstrates NN's commitment to incorporating biodiversity into investments. For this project, we identified ways to achieve biodiversity gain and were able to act on it at surprisingly low cost. We did not expect this and it emphasises the advantages to conduct such study early in the development stage. We will continue to work on more use cases to halt biodiversity loss."
