Biodiversity, i.e. the variety of biological species and communities, has collapsed as the result of human action in this millennium. With the growing impact of climate change and biodiversity loss, the understanding of the dependency between nature and the economy has increased. The business operations of Finnish companies are dependent not only on the Finnish nature but also on the natural capital of the rest of the world through global value chains.

– The value of services offered by nature has been difficult to measure, and economy has therefore been able to grow at the expense of natural capital. However, more than a half of the world's gross national product is in some way dependent on ecosystem services. Because of this, stopping biodiversity loss is an acute challenge that demands immediate action from companies, says Annina Tanhuanpää, Director, ESG and Corporate Responsibility at OP Financial Group.

Alongside climate issues, large corporations have begun to pay more attention to stopping biodiversity loss. Of the companies that responded to OP's Survey of Large Corporations, 71% said that protecting biodiversity was a key part of the company's sustainability strategy. More than 80% said that they were actively developing practices that reduce the negative impact on local biodiversity.

Stopping biodiversity loss requires concrete actions

To promote biodiversity both locally and through customer impact, OP Financial Group publishes a biodiversity road map. The road map is a part of the implementation of OP Financial Group's sustainability programme, and it includes actions that will be used to promote biodiversity at OP Financial Group in the coming years. The goal of the road map is to create a nature positive handprint by 2030. "Nature positive" means that OP Financial Group’s operations will have a net positive impact (NPI) on nature.

OP Financial Group's most significant impacts on biodiversity are created through companies' business. Sectors affecting for example biodiversity include real estate, construction, forest industry, agriculture, food industry, energy and traffic.

– Understanding companies' impacts and dependencies on nature is important from the point of view of both the company and the bank. Even though biodiversity tools and indicators are still being shaped globally, as the largest operator in the Finnish financial sector, we find it important to take concrete steps towards stopping biodiversity loss together with our customers, says Tanhuanpää.

The road map contains actions for OP's sustainable corporate finance, funds, insurance, OP cooperative banks and procurement. In future, OP will actively support its customers in setting targets for promoting biodiversity.

In addition to legislators and companies, the need to prevent biodiversity loss has also arisen from the direction of consumers.

– In OP Financial Group's Good Deeds Across Time survey, 14% of owner-customers chose deeds for the benefit of local nature as OP Financial Group's most important local corporate responsibility action in 2023. The road map we have now published also responds to the wishes of OP cooperative banks' owner-customers, says Tanhuanpää.