Acting to preserve biodiversity

Because the indirect impact of its business activities on the environment provides major leverage for protecting natural capital, the Group is taking concrete action to preserve biodiversity.

Supporting customers in their environmental transition

Already deeply committed to climate protection, Natixis is also making the protection of the natural environment an integral part of its corporate strategy and taking concrete action to provide solutions for the conservation of biological diversity, its restoration and sustainable exploitation, and the fair use of the benefits derived from it. The bank has mobilized all of its business lines in favor of biodiversity by joining the act4nature initiative in 2019 and subsequently by making a series of concrete and measurable commitments. This approach forms part of a more global effort to support its customers in their environmental transition. For example, it has committed to integrate biodiversity issues systematically into its range of sustainable financing solutions, to increase the assets under management dedicated to natural capital and the protection of water resources, to structure at least five new operations per year that incorporate specific biodiversity objectives, and to actively contribute to the emergence of market standards for measuring and reporting on the impact of companies in terms of biodiversity. In adopting these commitments, Natixis makes biodiversity a core element of its corporate social and environmental responsibility (CSR) system and central to its customer relations, in the same way as climate protection. 

For profitable and responsible agriculture 

Another example: 

The choice of the Caisse d’Epargne Loire Drôme Ardèche to support and/or finance some fifteen companies or cooperatives in its catchment area in different fields of intervention: arable farming, fruit production, viticulture or the marketing of wine, etc. All these companies use the principles of ‘rational cultivation,’ with a focus on local production. “We maintain a close partnership with more than 250 tree growers from family-run farms and promote the rational cultivation of fruit. 95% of the fruit processed comes from orchards in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, within an 80-kilometer radius around Saint-Paul-en-Jarez between the Pilat mountain range and the Lyonnais mountains,” explains one of its customers.
Financing innovative projects focused on sustainable and responsible agricultural practices is also the ambition of Banque Populaire Aquitaine Centre Atlantique, a stakeholder with Banque Populaire Occitane in the regional Alter’NA* program.

The principle?

Facilitating access to credit and guaranteeing loans to companies and farms that want to transform their practices in favor of an ecological and responsible agriculture: animal husbandry, plant production, fruit and vegetable production in greenhouses, short supply circuits, or organic farming. Since May 2020 and the effective implementation of the scheme, Banque Populaire Aquitaine Centre Atlantique has recorded around ten applications and a dozen others are currently being studied. In total, a 45 million euro funding envelope is open until December 31, 2023. 

*The Alter’NA program benefits from a public guarantee co-financed by the region and the European Union.