经济增长注定要破坏维持地球生命运转的自然系统？不一定！成功的实践将证明，投资和经营农业资产不仅是可能的，也是可以产生收益的。请看详细报道↓↓↓
大自然常常被视为是无价的，在现有金融体系和计算方法框架下，其价值无法直接用数字来衡量。但毫无疑问，大自然的内在、非经济价值，却时刻与全球经济相互交织、密不可分。
Nature is often seen as something priceless, its worth beyond quantification. While there’s no doubt that nature has an intrinsic, non-economic value, it’s just as true that it is deeply intertwined with the global economy.
地球自然系统为不断增长的人口提供至关重要的洁净空气、水、食物、纤维和其他资源。
Earth’s natural systems provide vital clean air, water, food, fiber and other resources for an ever-increasing human population.
人类与自然之间的联结不断深入：气候变化导致自然灾害日益严重和频繁。
And the connections go much deeper of course: climate change has exacerbated natural disasters.
比如近来在澳大利亚和美国西部发生的特大火灾，以一种悲剧性方式证明了我们与自然界的联系是多么紧密，如果我们不能处理好这种关系，将会遭受到怎样的痛苦。
Like the recent mega-fires inAustraliaand the American West, tragically demonstrating how incredibly interconnected we are with the natural world, and how we suffer when we fail to take care of it.
大自然常被认为是一种经济的“外部性”——没有定价主体、无法全面估值；然而随着人类的发展，我们让自然付出的代价，往往就是让社会付出的代价。
Nature is too often considered an economic "externality"—not priced or fully valued—and ignored on the balance sheet, usually at nature's and, eventually, society's expense.
那么这是否意味着，经济增长注定要破坏维持地球生命运转的自然系统？不一定。
Does this mean that economic growth is doomed to undermine the natural systems that comprise our planetary life support system? Not necessarily.
正如人类积极应对新冠肺炎疫情的表现一样，我们有能力迅速改变行为习惯和社交习惯，在短期内缓和甚至一定程度上抑制了新冠肺炎这个难以想象的威胁。
Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have shown humanity’s capacity to rapidly change our behavior in order to mitigate an unimaginable threat.
人类这一无以伦比的能力带来了希望：在地球所面临的其他挑战上，我们也可以这样做。
That offers hope that we can do the same with other challenges facing the planet.
我们必须重建固有的金融体系，将“自然收益”设计成为新体系的重要指标，使用金融工具来引领自然与社会的融合，长期、可持续地惠及人类和自然本身。
But doing so will require us to recreate our financial systems so that they value nature’s benefits and lead to long-term sustainable outcomes for people and nature.
我们采取措施的速度与规模必须与水资源短缺、气候变化等这样大规模全球环境问题相称。
And we must do so at a pace and scale commensurate with massive global environmental problems like water scarcity and climate change.
机构投资者是解决方案的一部分
Institutional investors are part of the solution
近年来，随着环境、社会和治理（ESG）在企业发展中倍受重视，ESG实践与ESG投资持续增长，为支持自然界的民间融资开辟了新来源，但这还不够。
While the growth of environmental, social and governance (ESG) funds and impact investing in recent years has unlocked new sources of private finance that supports the natural world, it’s still not enough.
如果我们想要大规模地进行金融服务改革，保险公司、银行或类似的大型机构投资者必须参与进来。
We need institional investors—large organizations like insurance companies and banks—on board if we want large-scale reformation of financial services.
当今，机构投资者共同管理着全球约88万亿美元资产中的绝大部分。相比之下，全球性环境保护慈善基金的规模只是沧海一粟。
Institutional investors collectively oversee the bulk of some US$88 trillion of global assets under management.
然而这笔数目惊人的资金并未充分释放潜力，它应当也完全有能力用来应对前所未有的环境可持续性挑战。
That is a staggering amount of money and underutilized potential to address environmental sustainability challenges at unprecedented scales and speeds—global philanthropic funding for the environment is a drop in the bucket by comparison.
环保组织可以成为变革推动者
Environmental organizations can be change agents
但仅凭这类资本，还不足以在速度和规模上创造有意义的变革。
But this type of capital alone is not sufficient to create meaningful change.
主流金融市场的转变需要深入而持久的推进，推进的过程应当设立严格、科学的目标并进行环环相扣的衡量。
The transformation of the mainstream financial markets needs to be deep and durable, and measured against rigorous scientific goals.
几十年来，大自然保护协会（TNC）一直尝试利用其科学专长影响大型私营企业，提高其环境友好实践能力，例如先正达和陶氏化学等。
TNC has for decades sought to leverage its scientific expertise to influence the private sector to improve practices at large corporations such as Syngenta and Dow Chemical.
我们确定了自然保护者和机构投资者之间有效合作所需的五个基本要素。
We identify five foundational elements required for effective collaborations between conservationists and institutional investors.
1 以科学和证据为引领
1. Lead with science and evidence.
科学和循证决策是世界领先的非营利性环保组织的核心宗旨。
Science- and evidence-based decision-making are core tenets of the world’s leading environmental nonprofit organizations.
这一决策方式可以用来严格量化自然资源的价值，帮助建立更有效预测人类和自然需求的模型。
This kind of decision-making can be used to rigorously quantify the value of nature’s resources, and contribute to models that better predict the needs of people and nature.
此外，非营利性组织往往处于数据应用的前沿，如遥感图像、公民科学和机器学习。
Furthermore, nonprofits are often at the leading frontiers of new forms of data collection and analysis, such as remote sensing imagery, citizen science and machine learning.
所有这些都可以验证和提供对环境影响和风险的新见解，并提供新的商业和投资机会。
All of which can validate and provide fresh insights into environmental impacts and risks and inform new business and investment opportunities.
2 形成投资案例
2. Make the investment case
双方合作取得进展的一个关键指标，是机构投资者在多大程度上将环境影响和风险纳入其决策之中。
A key indicator of progress is the extent to which institutional investors incorporate environmental impacts and risks into their decisions.
全球最大的资产管理公司贝莱德集团向客户宣布，将把环境可持续性作为投资组合建设和风险管理的一个组成部分。
The letter sent by BlackRock—the world’s largest asset manager—to its clients announcing it would make environmental sustainability integral to investment portfolio construction and risk management.
由于机构投资者承担使利润最大化的信托责任，我们必须证明：如何在不损害投资者回报的情况下达成环保成效。
Since institutional investors have a fiduciary obligation to maximize profit, it is imperative that we demonstrate how environmental impact can be achieved without compromising investor returns.
如果我们要求投资者放弃投资收益而将资金用于单向的慈善事业，将无法引发肩负客户受托责任的主流投资者的兴趣。
If we ask investors to trade off financial returns for doing good, we will not be able to mobilize mainstream investors who must fulfill their fiduciary duties to clients.
3 设立远大目标
3. Aim high
缺乏足够的雄心壮志也会有风险。联合国政府间气候变化专门委员会的最新报告指出，人类有大约10年的时间来应对气候危机。
There is a risk in not being ambitious enough. The most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that humans have about a decade to address the climate crisis.
这对于其他许多环境议题来说也是关键的10年。时间不等人，像平常一样按部就班无法完成此项艰巨任务。
This is a critical decade for a host of other environmental issues too. Business-as-usual is not getting the job done.
在历史上曾被视为“黑天鹅”事件的特大火灾、极端干旱和大风暴现在已成为“新常态”。
The mega-fires, extreme droughts, and massive storms that have historically been treated as black swan events are the new normal.
这表明我们目前的方法和模型低估了环境相关的风险。
That means our current approaches and models are underestimating environment-related risk.
我们需要开展大范围的工作，加速创新，并在潜在利益证明合理的情况下承担经审慎考虑的重大风险。
We need to be working at immense scale, innovating rapidly and taking appropriately considered but significant risk when the potential benefits justify it.
4 建立深厚的信任
4. Build deep trust
投资者和自然保护者有着不同的决策方式、方法、价值观和组织文化。
Investors and conservationists have different ways of making decisions, methodologies, values, and organizational cultures.
这些差异可能是合作的重大障碍，克服这些障碍需要建立深厚的信任，才能最终实现真正的伙伴关系。
These differences can be significant barriers to collaboration and overcoming them requires building deep trust to ultimately achieve true partnership.
建立信任需要花时间强化联系，认清各自优势，这对伙伴关系至关重要，严格评估彼此分析方法的差异和理由，并创建一种“通用语言”来描述收益与风险。
Building trust requires taking the time to forge relationships, to recognize each other’s strengths that are essential to the partnership, to rigorously evaluate the differences in and rationale for each others’ analytical approaches, and to create a common language for describing benefits and risks.
彼此信任和真正的伙伴关系并不需要在所有问题上达成一致，
Trust and true partnership do not require agreement on all issues.
但必须克服跨文化和知识储备上的差异，共同创造富于创新精神的、通常是跨越多个学科的对于挑战性问题的解决办法。
They must, however, be based on a commitment to work across cultures and knowledge bases to create innovative, often multi-disciplinary, solutions to challenging problems.
同样重要的，是建立投资者对产品“功效”的信任——这需要严格的监测和评估方案，这将使双方能够确保合作成效高于行业平均水平。
It is equally important to build investors’ trust in the efficacy of the product—this requires rigorous monitoring and evaluation protocols, which will allow the partners to ensure results are above the industry’s average.
5 持续实施政策影响和其他保护策略
5. Keep working on policy and other conservation strategies
环保组织应努力理解并加强影响环境市场运作和解决市场失灵的政策和法律框架。
Environmental organizations should be working to understand and strengthen the policy and legal frameworks that influence how environmental markets operate and address market failures.
与此同时，机构投资者应分享不同政策是如何影响决策以及是如何创造或消除障碍的。
At the same time, institutional investors should share how various policies impact their decision-making and create or remove barriers.
解决同一问题的不同实体间进行更多的沟通，将是找到有效解决办法的关键。
More communication between entities that see different sides of the same issue will be key for coming up with effective solutions.
关键的十年
The critical decade
我们正处于环境保护的关键十年。我们需要即刻行动起来，引导、激励创新资本的力量注入自然保护事业；
We are in a critical decade for the environment. We need action now—and we need new sources of capital to fund that action.
我们需要影响主流商业投资部门重视自然的价值，更好地服务于全人类和我们赖以生存的星球；
By using the deep scientific expertise of environmental organizations, we can influence the mainstream investment sector to value nature.
我们亦需要共同努力，为人类和地球创造一个更加光明、更加安全的未来。
Doing so will make that sector work better for all of humanity, and for the planet on which we rely.
来源：经济日报·外企头条工作室 朱琳（本文图片由大自然保护协会提供）
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来源： 经济日报