Event information

Date: Wednesday, September 27, 2023, 18:00 - 21:30 CEST

Location: PwC Zurich, 160 Birchstrasse, 8050 Zürich, Switzerland

Ticket Price: 

CHF 25 for General Admission (in-person attendance)

Free of charge for Virtual Viewers

About this event
 

In this hybrid event organized in collaboration by the Joint Alumni Forum, we will discuss the ways for businesses to achieve balance between carbon reduction, including offsetting, social impact, and the benefits nature-based solutions bring to climate action.

Subject matter experts representing WBCSD, a global CEO-led community of businesses, Hexagone, a Swiss tech company, Climeworks, originally Swiss carbon removal provider, Downforce Technologies, a global science- and data-driven land management and carbon reduction solution provider, and Posaidon Capital, a Swiss green finance and advisory firm, will cover relevant emerging frameworks, carbon reduction and nature-based solutions strategies, and related challenges and opportunities. Among the questions this event will cover:

- navigating the complexity of emerging industry standards (SBTN, TNFD, IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions, emerging standards for nature positive and due diligence) relevant to businesses, what is coming, how to prepare

- quantifying biodiversity impacts for corporates with support of science

- designing, implementing, and assessing nature-based solutions within own operations and supply chains – what are some of the successful examples

- what are best practices for roadmaps for target-setting for various sectors

- controversies: NbS does not equal decarbonization (and what are the nuances, e.g. between offsetting and insetting), what risks and opportunities putting a price-tag on nature entails, role of financial sector, etc.

We look forward to your participation.
 

As the world increasingly starts to implement carbon reduction projects to meet net zero goals to address climate change, the related crises of nature loss and inequality are emerging as additional risks to future business resilience. Whilst technological solutions for carbon reduction are evolving and will vastly improve, natural carbon offsetting mechanisms which have always been part of the ecosystem have been vastly overlooked at playing a critical role in restoring our planet. Our planet needs both to work in harmony.

Awareness for the need for a stable climate is opening up the door to realisation that societies cannot survive, let alone thrive, without all essential functions that the natural world provides: clean air, water, food and a stable earth system for us to exist within. Nature is the backbone of the world economy: in this sense, business depends on nature.

Disruption flowing from nature loss is creating direct and indirect risks for business – from physical operational risks to rapidly developing transition risks in the form of societal, regulatory, legal and reputational risks and broader systemic risks. The Global Biodiversity Framework signed in Montreal in December 2022 is the equivalent of a "Paris agreement" for nature. The mission is to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030. This societal goal of "nature positive" is driving action across governments, markets and civil society, with a complex landscape of emerging standards and approaches, including TNFD and SBTN.

Transformation across value-chains is required to urgently avoid and reduce negative impacts and look to restore and regenerate nature, such as through high integrity nature-based solutions that can deliver benefits for climate, nature, and people.

To register, and for more information: https://www.eventbrite.ch/e/race-to-net-zero-carbon-and-nature-positive-registration-648359128607