Biodiversity

FAIRR is pleased to launch the third phase of its Waste and Pollution engagement. This engagement aims to encourage meat producers and fertiliser companies to conduct comprehensive risk assessments on biodiversity and water quality, covering the entire lifecycle of manure, animal waste and/or fertiliser products. The engagement also emphasises the need for strategies to manage these risks, incorporating principles of circularity.

Explore the latest report, which focuses on the progress made by companies in the second phase of this engagement, as well as areas where there remain significant gaps with leading practices.

It is well established that agriculture is the biggest driver of biodiversity loss through land use change, direct exploitation, pollution, climate change, and invasive alien species, but it can be difficult for investors to navigate the data and tools that are emerging to identify priority areas for action. FAIRR partnered with Iceberg Data Lab to explore corporate biodiversity footprinting and how it can be used with the Coller FAIRR Protein Producer Index to derive insights and prioritise stewardship initiatives with three case studies covering six global companies.

FAIRR’s thematic report on regenerative agriculture and the role of the investor is to assess the growing number of regenerative agriculture commitments across 79 publicly listed agri-food companies to understand whether these are meaningful enough to deliver climate and nature goals. Regenerative agriculture has gained considerable traction within the agri-food sector as a way of reducing the environmental and social harm associated with conventional production practices. Although there is no universally accepted definition, the practices associated with regenerative agriculture focus on positive environmental and social outcomes.

To ensure that emerging seafood traceability commitments and systems are aligned with the best practice, the FAIRR Initiative, with support from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF-US), UNEP FI’s Sustainable Blue Economy Finance Initiative, the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA), and Planet Tracker are bringing key seafood sector investors together to collaboratively engage in constructive dialogues with a core group of seafood companies.

More than three billion tonnes of waste, including manure and urine, are produced by farm animals each year. This vast volume exceeds that of all other types of waste, yet it receives little attention from meat producers and investors. Manure represents a precious store of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer which if too often lost to the environment, creating water and air quality issues that impact biodiversity and local communities alike. 

This engagement asks the largest pork and poultry producers to better assess and disclose the nutrient pollution risks, and put in place circular solutions that capture the value of the nutrients producers in livestock farming and processing facilities.

This webinar explored the key takeaways from the first dialogues of our biodiversity, Waste & Pollution Collaborative Engagement. It also offered members a preview of FAIRR's upcoming work on regenerative agriculture and biodiversity-wide scenario analysis.