Nature and biodiversity
Nature is fundamental to human existence
Why it matters to us
Nature underpins the world’s food system, sustains air, water and soil quality, regulates the climate, provides pollination and pest control and reduces the impact of natural hazards. Continued human and economic development is entirely reliant on nature’s ability to replenish, recover and maintain balance. And yet, agricultural and industrial practices are causing deforestation, pollution of groundwater, the loss of wetlands and coral reef collapse. Biodiversity - the variety of all life on Earth that underpins the resilience of nature’s ecosystems - is declining more quickly now than at any other time in human history.
At Zurich, we see firsthand how extreme weather events are taking an increasing toll across the world. As insurers and risk managers, we understand that continued ecosystem loss depletes nature’s capacity to absorb carbon - worsening climate change and driving further degradation of nature in a negative, reinforcing cycle that erodes resilience of our physical environment. These interconnected risks impact our customers who rely on a strong, stable economy.
As the adverse impacts of climate change continue to accelerate, efforts to address nature loss and support biodiversity become increasingly important to build resilience to these impacts. That is why we aim to deepen our understanding of nature-related risk and help customers to better understand, reduce and prevent these risks, especially where they amplify climate-related perils. Our specific focus is where nature-related financial risks are material and where we can use our capability to build climate resilience. We aim to address nature loss in a credible and commercially relevant way, grounded in our role as a risk manager.
Our role: Building resilience to nature-related risks
We draw on expertise built over 150 years as a global insurer to manage and enhance resilience to nature-related risks. Our approach focuses on actions that aim to support our Climate Transition Plan:
In our risk management
Understanding and managing the impacts of nature related risks across our business.
In our products and services
Supporting customers to manage nature-related risk and build resilience against compounding perils through our understanding of risk, insurance capability and risk-engineering expertise.
In our partnerships and advocacy
Contributing to nature resilience through collaborations with partners while advocating for policies that can support the scaling of nature based solutions.
In our business practices
In line with our capacity to drive change as an insurer and institutional investor, we also support projects that aim for positive nature outcomes.
Our actions: Embedding nature across our business
We recognize the critical importance of nature to our business and our customers. We take action on four fronts:
Risk management
We manage nature-related risks through a structured approach:
- In our underwriting and in line with our positions on sustainability issues, we screen certain insurance activities for elevated sustainability risks, especially in sensitive areas such as protected ecosystems. In our underwriting policies we integrate nature-related risk factors where relevant.
- Through ESG-integration, our responsible investment process considers nature-related risks relating to for example biodiversity and land use.
Looking ahead
We aim to take actions to strengthen our internal capabilities and customer offering. We will continue to deepen our understanding of the resilience of our portfolios to nature-related impacts and dependencies. In line with market demand, we will explore new services and products that aim to support customer resilience to broader nature-related risks and dependencies. We will continue to evolve our carbon removal portfolio and align with operational sustainability best practices.
Alongside these actions, we will continue to advocate for effective policy frameworks that can drive real-world impact. Protecting and restoring nature requires collaboration across public and private sectors - our capacity to act relies on supportive policies and mature nature-based markets which continue to evolve.
Safeguarding nature is not just an environmental imperative—it’s essential to building the resilience of our society, economy, and shared future.
