Attendees at the second and final conference day of Sustainable Finance Week were urged to embrace their inner David Attenborough as the day’s discussions focused on biodiversity.
The session began with a no-punches-pulled keynote speech from Dr Gemma Cranston, Executive Director of Pollination Group.
She began with some sobering statistics on biodiversity loss – 83% of wild mammals have been lost due to human degradation, an estimated one million animals have gone extinct due to human activity and $44 trillion, the estimated total economic value of nature on an annual basis.

Funnelling capital into nature-positive projects that work with, not against, nature was one of the strong themes that emerged on the first conference day of Sustainable Finance Week.   
The conference began with a keynote from financier and environmentalist Ben Goldsmith, who asserted that rewilding – restoring land to its natural, uncultivated state – should become an asset class, adding that there is a strong economic case to be made for doing so.
“Solutions that run with the grain of nature are often cheaper, more durable, they work,” he said.

Guernsey Finance’s Sustainable Finance Council is teaming up with the GTA University Centre and industry experts to deliver a series of education seminars that will tackle Guernsey’s sustainable finance skills and development.
The appetite for the Sustainable Finance Education Series was identified by a Guernsey Finance survey, which assessed local sustainable finance skills, talent levels and gaps.
The questionnaire aligned to a recent United Nations Development Programme Financial Centres for Sustainability (FC4S) survey, of which Guernsey Finance is a member.