Strengthening initiatives for biodiversity conservation and nature positive
Contribution to activities aimed at achieving the 30by30 biodiversity target
In March 2023, we participated in the 30by30 Alliance for Biodiversity to contribute to achieving the 30by30 diversity target the Japanese government strives to achieve, based on the rationale of the Kunming-Montreal Framework adopted at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) held in December 2022. The alliance is a coalition of volunteers working on the public-and-private sectors to conserve and protect at least 30% of their own country's land and sea areas by 2030 (30 by 30), with the goal of halting and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 (nature positive).
We aim to have our areas under conserved biodiversity registered as Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures (OECM), including the Creation of Hometown Forests at our steelworks and the Creation of Sea Forests.
In October 2023, the Chita Peninsula Green Belt, which was a collaboration between our Nagoya factory, government, students, experts, NPOs, and 11 other companies, was registered with the OECM.
What is an Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures (OECM)?
Disclosures for biodiversity conservation and nature positive
With biodiversity conservation and nature positive now drawing attention as significant global issues, just like carbon neutrality and a circular economy, we regard nature positive as a critical environmental issue, strengthening our efforts to take various measures. At the same time, we will strive to enhance the quality of information disclosure considering the Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), which we are now formulating for release in September 2023.
Enhancement of governance
We report and discuss environmental policy-related issues every six months at the Environmental Planning Committee chaired by the Representative Director in charge of Environment, with “biodiversity conservation and nature positive” added from fiscal 2023 as one of the deliberation/review items.
As with other environmental policy-related issues such as climate change measures and the creation of a circular economy, the current review details on biodiversity conservation and nature positive are also reported and deliberated at the Management Committee and the Board of Directors meetings under the supervision of the Board of Directors.
Identification of nature-related risks and opportunities
we began to survey the impact of steel production on nature using various assessment tools (such as IBAT, Biodiversity Risk Filter, and Aqueduct etc.), for our directly operated steelworks and iron ore and coking coal mines in the upstream supply chain, following the LEAP approach1 advocated by the TNFD.
From now on, we will strive for information disclosure in line with the TNFD and based on the results of this survey.
