WhiteBox

Sustainability · 1 of 4

Environment

The health of the environment directly impacts its constituents in the short and long term. Identifying risks to the environment and opportunities for positive impact in a timely manner is critical to ensuring sustainability and resilience.

Environment · Social · Governance · Finance

The Copernicus Sentinel satellites image every point of land about every five days at ten metres, free to anyone.

  • Climate risk

    Models indicate global greenhouse-gas emissions leading to runaway climate effects. Rising sea levels, prolonged droughts, ocean warming, hurricane intensification and biodiversity loss are among the impacts already observed. Climate risk also correlates with increased social, governance and private-sector risk: social risk from tension and conflict over constrained resources such as water, and the resulting impacts on food security and population movements; material private-sector risk from business models slow to react to distressed and physically vulnerable assets, and rising reputational costs from a perceived lack of action against a universal threat; governance risk increasingly interlinked with the transparency and reporting of climate-related risks, where the European Union (EU) has led with its Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation and its corporate sustainability reporting rules.

  • Biodiversity risk

    Human activity has led to drastic losses in biodiversity, from endangerment to extinction of species. Environmental degradation leads to collapse when tipping points in ecosystems are reached.

    • 1 million plant and animal species face extinction in the coming years.
    • 75% of land and 66% of oceans have been “significantly altered” by human activity.
    • 50% of wetlands have been lost since 1900.
    • Land degradation threatens the livelihoods of 3.2 billion people.

    Biodiversity risk can materialise into significant downstream impact on food chains and food security, exacerbating geopolitical and social risks. Increased regulatory and compliance requirements, along with global scrutiny, add governance challenges and risks that extend to supply chains and external stakeholder networks.

    Sources: the 2019 global assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which distils nearly 15,000 studies and government reports and was approved by representatives of 132 governments in Paris; reported in Nature 569, 171 (2019), doi:10.1038/d41586-019-01448-4, and doi:10.1038/d41586-018-03891-1.

  • WhiteBox A.I.

    Leverage structured and unstructured data to map, assess and prioritise material environmental risks to mitigate and identify opportunities for positive impact. Optimise long-term strategy and adapt business models to changing global environmental dynamics.