New Forests joins the PRI’s Inevitable Policy Response as a Strategic Partner
First Australian Asset Manager associated with the IPR
SYDNEY – 9 July 2021 – New Forests Pty Ltd, the international sustainable forestry investment manager, today joined the Principles for Responsible Investment’s (“PRI”) Inevitable Policy Response (“IPR”) program as a strategic partner. New Forests is the first Australian asset manager to be associated with the IPR and will bring significant global investment experience to support the IPR in addressing the role of land use in mitigating climate change. New Forests joins six other major financial institutions announced overnight in London as new strategic partners: BlackRock, BNP Asset Management, Fitch Ratings, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Nuveen and Robeco.
Radha Kuppalli, Managing Director, Impact and Advocacy at New Forests, will participate in the IPR on behalf of New Forests. Ms. Kuppalli said, “New Forests looks forward to working with other investors in continuing to make the IPR a valuable tool for asset owners. The IPR provides much needed focus on how climate-positive land use and nature-based climate solutions, alongside clean energy, will enable the transition to a sustainable future. New Forests can lend its international expertise in sustainable forestry investment, carbon markets, and conservation finance in helping to inform the IPR on how the sustainable land use transition may unfold toward net zero.”
Led by Vivid Economics and Energy Transition Advisers, IPR seeks to provide investors with a forward assessment of acceleration in global policy on climate, including realistic input to and output from, the energy and land use climate transition. The IPR was commissioned by the PRI in 2018 and is a significant component in PRI investor engagement around climate driven impacts on asset values, asset allocation and capital flows. It engages deeply with asset owners and managers, with 178 investors using IPR to inform their reporting under the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). New Forests and the other strategic partners will provide support to IPR’s program including the 2021 Forecast Policy Update reflecting expected policy accelerations, particularly up to 2025 and 2030, a new IPR 1.5 degrees Celsius Required Policy Scenario and support for IPR in its ongoing development into an international reference standard for investors.
In its March 2021 update, the IPR forecasted that Australia will announce a Net Zero target by 2023 and put in place policies to reduce emissions from the agricultural sector by 2025. New Forests’ participation in the IPR is part of the company’s work to collaborate with others to ensure sustainable land management is recognised as a climate solution in Australia and globally. New Forests manages over 500,000 hectares of plantation forests, conservation areas, agriculture, and carbon projects across Australia and 1 million hectares of investments globally. New Forests believes investors have a significant opportunity to invest in the sustainable land use transition.
New Forests’ CEO David Brand said, “We see investment in land management in Australia and globally making a substantial contribution to achieving both net zero commitments and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, including conservation and restoration of ecosystems, sustainable management of forestry and agriculture, and the use of sustainable, renewable materials in the emerging circular bio-economy. The asset allocation strategies of institutional investors can be aligned with a sustainable land use transition that is parallel to the clean energy transition and will require hundreds of billions of dollars of investment.”
Founded in 2005, New Forests manages approximately USD 4.5 billion in funds across Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia, and the United States on behalf of a range of institutional investment clients. The firm specialises in sustainable forestry, carbon finance, conservation finance and rural land investments.
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