Biodiversity Day 2024
On November 27, RBI hosted its first "Biodiversity Day" to highlight the topic of nature and biodiversity for the industry and banking sector in Austria. The aim of the event was to make biodiversity more tangible and to promote relevant measures for a sustainable future.
Stakeholder and client engagement is highly valued at RBI, especially in the areas of sustainability and ESG financing. Therefore, on November 27, RBI hosted its first "Biodiversity Day", a focus day on nature and biodiversity for the industry and banking sectors in Austria. The event brought together over 100 national and international participants, including colleagues from the entire Raiffeisen family, the ÖRV, and the Raiffeisen Sustainability Initiative, many clients from various sectors, representatives from the Austrian Financial Market Authority, the UN Environmental Programme for Financial Institutions, as well as international ESG and biodiversity experts and consultants. Representatives from the Chamber of Commerce, research, NGOs, and start-ups were also present and enriched the lively discussion.
Biodiversity is a complex topic with a significant impact on the economy. Over half of the global GDP, approximately 44 trillion dollars, is dependent on nature and its services to varying degrees, exposing companies and banks to the risks of biodiversity loss. This high dependency between business activities and intact ecosystems and biological diversity needs to be addressed in dealing with biodiversity, a challenge that can only be solved together. Appropriate stakeholder engagement is therefore essential for the learning process of banks and industry. Invaluable industry insight was delivered from attending clients such as Wienerberger, Agrana, OMV, Prinzhorn, and Schmid Industrieholding GmbH.
The goal of the event was to make the topic of biodiversity more tangible for clients and consultants and to highlight relevant measures for both the industry and the banking world. RBI's Biodiversity Day took an important step towards dialogue, structuring the topic from an international perspective, the regulatory requirements of supervision, European best practice knowledge, and its anchoring in the industry, to the grassroots discussion where panelists from finance and industry, as well as research, start-ups, and project management discussed current challenges and opportunities. In small focus groups on Food/Agriculture, Construction/Real Estate, and Infrastructure/Energy, best practice examples were highlighted and the challenges and opportunities were discussed together with ESG experts and consultants as well as representatives from the respective sectors.
Both the great interest in the event and the exciting discussions demonstrated the willingness of all stakeholders to contribute to a sustainable future in harmony with nature, not against it.
