The LEAP approach – &Green alignment

In the Scoping phase, preceding the actual LEAP Approach, Financial Institutions are recommended to assess the nature of their business, flag ‘entry points’ for nature-related impacts, and assess at what level those impacts can be analyzed and disclosed. &Green is a relatively small fund with a clear vision on impact, so our investment principles, Theory of Change and monitoring tools are designed to give us a good understanding of our nature-related risks and opportunities. The key ‘entry points’ are in the jurisdictions where we invest, which meet our Jurisdictional Eligibility Criteria (JEC), and, more specifically, in the landscapes that our investees impact, as defined in the Landscape Protection Plan for each investment. The investments we make are intended to support transformational change in commodity supply chains and are therefore by nature in locations and sectors with nature-related risks and opportunities. We analyze these impacts at the investee level, and aggregate the data at the portfolio level. See TNFD Content Index Table.

The first phase of the Leap Approach is the Locate phase, in which the ‘nature interface’ is identified. For &Green, this process starts at an early stage in our investment approach, when we identify the jurisdictions where we can invest. In our JEC Assessments, we identify priority jurisdictions, and priority sectors within those jurisdictions, where transformational change is needed, and achievable. Once we identify an investment opportunity in this jurisdiction, we assess the ‘footprint’ of the business, and the landscape it interfaces with, in an initial screening. This screening is part of the Forest & Biodiversity Framework.

The results of this screening inform the focus areas of our environmental and social due diligence. This is where we carry out the Evaluate and Assess steps of the LEAP approach. All environmental and social characteristics of the landscape are mapped, including in the businesses’ supply chains. Impacts and dependencies are assessed in external Environmental and Social Impact Assessments, following our standardized methodology, to ensure consistency across sectors and geographies. If the initial Forest & Biodiversity screening resulted in a high risk profile, a specific Forest & Biodiversity study is commissioned to provide insight in the biodiversity No Net Loss / Net Gain balance, and potential need for biodiversity offsets. Based on the results of these assessments, we get an overview of the risks and opportunities in a potential investment. These risks and opportunities, as well as a detailed description of the landscape and the businesses’ impacts and dependencies, are outlined in a Landscape Protection Plan (LPP) , developed for (and with) each individual investee.

This is also where the Prepare phase of the LEAP approach is implemented. Impact targets, strategic milestones and deliverables are defined for each investee and listed in an Environmental and Social Action Plan (ESAP) , annexed to the LPP. The LPP includes a chapter on monitoring, reporting and verification, where we establish how we assess progress against an investee’s ESAP. This includes an annual independent verification, carried out by external experts, to complement an investee’s self-reporting requirements. Both LPP and ESAP are publicly available on the &Green website for each of our investments.

The LEAP approach concludes with ‘disclosure actions’. You can find our disclosures throughout this report and on our website. For a helpful guide on our interpretation of the TNFD disclosures, please refer to this TNFD Content Index Table.