annual review indst 2024 public - Flipbook - Side 18
18
EOS
Q&A: Natural Resource Stewardship
Joanne Beatty
Theme co-lead:
Natural Resource Stewardship
Ming Yang
Theme:
Natural Resource Stewardship
In 2024, nature-related issues remained an
engagement priority across key sectors including
food and beverage, mining and chemicals companies.
In addition to this direct engagement, we increased
our collaborative engagement, including through
Nature Action 100, FAIRR, PRI Spring, the Ceres
Valuing Water Finance Initiative, the Investor
Initiative on Hazardous Chemicals, and the Finance
Sector Deforestation Action initiative.
Q. How has engagement around nature and
biodiversity evolved in 2024?
A. We expect companies to address marine and terrestrial
biodiversity loss across their value chains in line with the
mission to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, as
agreed within the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
We continued to encourage companies to assess and
disclose their nature-related impacts, dependencies, risks
and opportunities in line with the Taskforce on Naturerelated Financial Disclosure (TNFD) recommendations.
The insights from this assessment should be used to
develop a strategy and transition plan, with time-bound
targets, to address the most material nature-related risks
and impacts. We also emphasised the importance of
supply chain oversight and the governance of naturerelated issues, including ensuring robust understanding at
board-level and the alignment of lobbying positions.
In 2024 we responded to three TNFD sector guidance
consultations for food and agriculture, beverage, and
apparel, accessories and footwear. For the apparel sector
we made recommendations related to circularity, human
health issues caused by chemicals, human rights, and the
sector’s power to influence.
also recommended support for a shareholder resolution
asking Home Depot to conduct an impact and
dependence assessment across its value chain to inform
its biodiversity strategy.
Q. Concerns about water quality and scarcity
remained high on the agenda in 2024. How did
we respond?
A. EOS intensified its engagement with companies,
pressing them to identify their impacts and dependencies,
and to mitigate related risks. We raised the issue of water
security and pressed for risk assessments and robust
targets and strategies in engagements with Yum! Brands,
Hormel Foods, Asahi Group and McDonald’s. All four
have conducted water risk assessments, and Asahi has
set a goal to identify 100% of its manufacturing sites
located in water risk areas by 2030.
We also engaged with agricultural commodity company
Cargill on its target of enabling the restoration of 600
billion litres of water in water-stressed regions by 2030,
encouraging it to consider setting targets across all of its
watersheds. To date the company has restored 9.2 billion
litres against its target and continues to take a prioritised
approach to watershed selection.
We also engaged with Nestlé on plastic pollution,
Bayer on plastic’s impact on aquatic life, and chemical
companies on the harmful effects of PFAS on the
environment and humans. The threat of unchecked
deep-sea minerals mining remained a concern.
Federated Hermes Limited became a co-signatory to
a joint statement2 urging governments to protect the
oceans and not proceed with deep-seabed mining until
the risks are comprehensively understood and the
alternatives fully explored.
We recommended support for shareholder resolutions
seeking reports about sourcing minerals from deep-sea
mining at automotive manufacturers General Motors and
Tesla. We considered that greater clarity and a
commitment to a moratorium on deep-sea mining would
signal the importance of supply chain oversight as vehicle
electrification accelerates.
We engaged with Nestlé on plastic
pollution, Bayer on plastic’s impact on
aquatic life, and chemical companies
on the harmful effects of PFAS on the
environment and humans.
Biodiversity also made a strong showing during voting
season via shareholder resolutions1 on plastic pollution,
deep sea mining, deforestation, pesticide use, microfibre
pollution, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and animal
welfare. For example, at PepsiCo, we recommended
support for a shareholder resolution asking for a report
on the risks related to biodiversity and nature loss. We
1
2
EOS Public Engagement Report.
Leading financial institutions call on governments to not permit deep-sea mining – Finance for Biodiversity Foundation.
