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The Launch of the LSA’s Nature and Biodiversity Working Group (by Jenni Ramos)

The Legal Sustainability Alliance has hosted several workshops on biodiversity and nature in recent years, with a particular focus on what it means for lawyers. Our 2024 summer event “A legal lifeline for nature” featured Clare Brook (CEO of Blue Marine) in discussion with Sharif Shivji KC (co-author of the legal opinion Nature-related risks and directors’ duties under the law of England and Wales).

Many assume that the intersection between law and nature is found primarily in litigation cases such as those pursued by Blue Marine Foundation, environmental law practice or planning law and biodiversity net gain regulations.

While these are important areas, the relevance of nature and biodiversity to many members of the LSA falls outside the sphere of environmental and planning law and emerges from the ‘business case for biodiversity’. The legal opinion described above found that nature-related risks and opportunities are highly relevant to the duties of company directors to act with care and promote the success of their company. This is due to the global recognition that biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation pose financial risks to the entire economy and the companies and financial institutions within it. This places it firmly on the agenda of lawyers who advise companies across all practice areas. It is an emerging area of law that most lawyers are either unaware of, or only just beginning to grapple with.

Nature-related risks include physical and transition (including legal) risks. They can manifest in procurement and supply chain issues, strategic nature-related litigation (including cases relating to anti-money laundering, greenwashing and financial misrepresentation), insurance risk assessment and compliance with corporate and financial sustainability reporting and due diligence frameworks.

Nature-related risk is often viewed as a future concern or merely a compliance issue with incoming reporting regimes. Whilst the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report has in recent years consistently listed biodiversity as a top five risk over the next ten years, this framing of it being a future not immediate risk is misleading. The UK legal opinion (written by leading barristers primarily specialising in corporate and financial law) emphasised that a company’s nature-related dependencies or impacts had the potential to affect a company’s short term interests as well as its long term financial success. Nature related risks can be both acute and chronic in character and have the ability to manifest in cascading and compounding chains of events which could manifest rapidly in the short term.

The LSA is launching a Nature and Biodiversity Working Group to discuss how nature-related risks and their associated reporting regimes will affect member firms and clients. Members can explore issues they are facing, discuss where nature-related risks sit on their firm’s agenda and how it integrates with existing work on climate risk, sustainability reporting and supply chain due diligence. Members will lead the group’s direction, fostering knowledge sharing, identifying practical insights and potential outcomes.

As chair of the working group, I will be facilitating the first session, provisionally on 25th February at 12.30pm. Please email [email protected] if you would like to join us.