(Monday 28th October) Commenting on how the financial sector can protect nature as COP16’s Finance Day kicks off in Colombia, Alexandra Pinzon, Head of Biodiversity at ShareAction, said: "The financial sector has huge potential to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by using its influence with the companies it owns and finances to improve their impact on vital ecosystems. We need to see the investment community doing far more to live up to this responsibility.

"As a priority, investors should develop biodiversity risk management strategies that clearly address how they intend to assess and reduce their impacts on nature – especially when investing in and near areas that are internationally recognised for conservation or protected.

"To help drive action at the scale needed, finance leaders should also get behind calls for stronger government regulation and national policies that mainstream biodiversity. With just six years left to meet global goals to protect nature, we need to see higher ambition across the board."

Notes to editors

ShareAction and UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre's briefing sets out how investors should strengthen their approach to protect some of the world's most important biodiversity-rich areas: Risk Management in Protected Areas