Big business is under pressure to clean up its impact on nature and biodiversity.

Big business is creating boot camps for a world that wants to be clean about its impact on the environment and biodiversity.

Fonterra, Genesis Energy, Mercury, ANZ, Westpac, Silver Fern Farms and Zespri are all boot-camping in preparation for the next big thing in corporate reporting; Environmental financial disclosures.

New Zealand companies continue to prepare for the first year of legally mandated financial disclosure, which requires them to disclose the emissions and risks posed by climate change in their business.

But in September, the world’s first environmental-related financial disclosure standards will be published by the Taskforce on Nature-related financial disclosures, funded by international companies, and some governments, including Australia, but not New Zealand.

Initially the environmental report will be voluntary, but large companies expect that it will not be long before they are accepted into local law.

Genesis Energy’s general manager of sustainability Kate van Praagh expects it to follow the same path as climate-related disclosures for large companies and fund managers, which started out voluntary, but are eventually written into law.

But it will happen very quickly, he says.

It wouldn’t make much sense to want a weather report, but not an environmental report, he said.

“They are two sides of the same coin, climate impacts and biodiversity impacts. You can’t have one without the other, and that will be more welcome. ” you say.

“More attention is needed.”

Annabelle Chartres, sustainability partner at PwC, has been running Aotearoa Circle camps for large businesses.

The boot camps focus on local environmental impact, which is why the farming sector, as well as banks, which lend to local businesses, participate.

It’s also probably why the big retailers didn’t participate. Large retailers like The Warehouse Group produce products that are grown and manufactured around the world, and their suppliers have their own impact on the environment and biodiversity.

In climate related advertising the climate impacts of suppliers are called scope 3 emissions, and retailers are already showing that they are aware that they are responsible for the equivalent environmental impact of the products they sell.

The Warehouse Group, for example, stocks a surprising number of products, many of which are wrapped in plastic. Environment Minister Manatū mō te Taiao estimates by 2020 less than 30% of the country’s plastic waste will end up being recycled.

How many products does the Warehouse Group show its claim that 35,600 of its private products have “sustainable” properties, although these products represent only 213 million dollars of its total sales of 1.8 billion.

Those big sellers have a big job ahead of them, said Chartres, along with KiwiSaver senior executives.

KiwiSaver’s large funds can hold investments in thousands of companies around the world, each with its own impact on the environment and ecosystems.

Chartres says: “Nature, and its complexity, is an order of magnitude, much bigger and more complex.

“When companies start looking at this it strikes a little fear into their hearts.”

The goal of environmental financial disclosure has the same goal as climate-related financial disclosure – to increase transparency, and to force companies to reduce their impact on the planet.

But while it’s a big deal for companies, society seems to see environmental impacts as lower down their priority list than climate, and right now they’re being squeezed by the cost of living.

Genesis’ latest annual report showed that the energy company’s environmental performance (as distinct from climate emissions) was the fourth of the 10 issues most important to “stakeholders”, but it was lower than the general public, van Praagh.

The report related to the nature of the big companies involved at the moment is not extensive, and tends to focus on interesting stories, such as the joint work of Genesis in the Whoo Forever project and the Department of Conservation.

The whio, sometimes called the Blue Duck, evolved to survive in fast-moving streams, and the Genesis and DOC project grew out of an understanding of the impact of the Genesis dams on the waterways they inhabit.

Although it was a bad year for whio due to bad weather in January and February, the project has doubled the number of breeding pairs since 2011.

“For retail customers, every time we go out and ask some questions, there’s a positive response to that,” Van Praagh said.

“But if you look at all our material tests, keeping the lights on, and good health will win every time.”

Kiwibank participants ranked “biodiversity and biodiversity” as the second lowest of the 20 most important factors, ahead of “financial performance and shareholder value”.

Kiwibank rated it as the least likely to make an impact.

But that kind of attitude is now starting to change in banks when it comes to climate change, with the bank’s KiwiSaver schemes phasing out fossil fuels, and smaller banks starting to test borrowers’ environmental credentials.

On Tuesday, Heartland Bank, the country’s largest commercial bank, said for the first time it introduced an “environmental risk assessment tool” to assess the sustainability credentials of businesses and rural loan applicants.

Environmental reporting can focus KiwiSaver senior managers on the environmental impacts of the companies they invest in, says Kate Brownsey, sustainability analyst at the Pathfinder KiwiSaver scheme.

“It’s coming. “Not enough people are doing it at the moment, but they are expected to do it,” he said.

KiwiSaver managers have had to rush to respond to many investment failures in a way that many of their customers expect; on landmines, cluster munitions, nuclear weapons, tobacco, fossil fuels, misinformation, and animal cruelty in the cosmetics industry.

But there are still new environmental issues that KiwiSaver schemes will have to deal with, and, if environmental financial disclosures are to be adopted, they will need to be reported.

“Plastic is coming. “Babies are born with microplastics in their systems,” he said.

It doesn’t take much digging into KiwiSaver’s huge funds to find investment in companies that clean up flakes, for example, from plastic packaging.

Buried in ANZ’s KiwiSaver portfolio is a US retailer that wraps potatoes in plastic for sale.

Some examples of companies with high plastic usage include Coca-Cola, Pepsico and Walmart in the US. There are also large Australian and New Zealand retailers such as Warehouse and China General Plastics and Dow Chemical.

New Zealand is participating in global discussions to establish an international plastic agreement.

Climate, and environmental-based financial disclosures also present emerging risks to investors.

Under climate finance disclosure laws, banks and insurers must tell investors what climate change, sea level rise, and climate change will mean for their businesses.

Environmentally-based financial disclosures were one of the topics at the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia’s (RIAA) August conference in Auckland.

RIAA’s Estelle Parker says that there are large companies in Australia and New Zealand that “pilot-tested” the development of money related to the developing environment, but there is a feeling among others that it is “overwhelming”.

Fund managers have seen this, and are putting pressure on the companies they invest in to identify those risks, he said.

“They have a lot of risk in their balance sheets that they haven’t identified.”

Perhaps highlighting the risks that may suddenly arise for companies in the plastic sector is Lydia Chai’s attempt to get Parliament to ban the export of plastic for recycling to developing countries.

His appeal, which followed revelations about the extent of plastic pollution in his country of birth, Malaysia, led to an inquiry by a Parliamentary select committee, which has now recommended that plastic exports be banned and monitored.

Australia introduced such a ban, forcing the country to deal with its own plastic waste, although it has had to temporarily reverse that as the plastic mountains grow.

Public demand for companies to report on their environmental impacts is beginning to grow.

“Nature is part of New Zealand’s identity,” says Chartres.

“We can touch it and feel it, and think about this country, and its natural beauty and physical goods.

He says: “The idea of ​​protecting it, restoring it, valuing it makes sense.