 Hi, I'm Teresa Ish, Senior Program Officer at the Walton Family Foundation. At the Foundation, our environment program works on solutions to protect water in the face of climate change, so that nature and people can thrive together. As the head of the Oceans team, I oversee a strategy that works with fishers, seafood industry leaders, and advocates on balanced approaches that work for healthy oceans and people. Across sectors right now, we see investors trying, often earnestly, to use their capital to create a more sustainable world. That's great, but also investors' best intentions aren't going to be enough to solve the problems at the scale we need right now. This is true across industries. Let's take sustainable seafood as an example, because that happens to be my passion. Retailers are buying sustainably certified products, which is a huge step forward. But what's not changing is that if you're a seafood buyer without a sustainability commitment, you just buy what's available. And sometimes those are the products that were rejected by the retailers with commitments because they don't meet sustainability expectations. To me, that implies that while the high level of intentions of supporting sustainability by moving more money to good things are a great step, but we also need more to drive meaningful change in the system. We have to think about the transactional decisions along the way that can either make or break a sustainable approach. We need the enabling advocacy around the edges of day-to-day decision making to drive change so that companies are getting sustainable seafood, whether they care about it or not. We know that there will always be companies who don't care. So an impact investor who says, I want to invest in a company that is reducing carbon emissions should also be saying, what else needs to happen to ensure globally our emissions are going down? And how do I support that? How does my investment contribute to that global goal? Just as an individual changing out a light bulb won't solve the climate crisis if we're not also addressing things like changing the transportation sector, an individual investment or company commitment can't get us to where we need to go. Individual actions are necessary, but insufficient to change the system. So today, as investors, entrepreneurs, and changemakers, how do we make sure that our individual actions are complemented by our collective voices? We have three great panelists with us today for our waterfall conversation. We have Nikki William Bahari, and she's the investor engagement lead for the World Benchmarking Alliance. Kirsten James is the program director for Water at Ceres. And Maggie Monast is the senior director for Climate Smart Agriculture Finance and Markets at the Environmental Defense Fund. So the way we'll work today is I'll open this up with a question to Nikki. She will respond and then ask a question of Kirsten, who will respond in turn, and then she'll ask a question to Maggie, who will respond and kick it back to me. So here we go. Nikki, WBA has benchmarked many companies in many different sectors. Your benchmarks look at companies' environmental performance as well as social and governance issues. Why does it matter to investors? And how can investors and companies work together to deliver change at scale we need? Thanks very much, Theresa. First, I'd like to say I'm excited to be contributing to, of course, the conference, but also this panel, as I do see and very much believe that investors have a really key role to play in accelerating the sustainability transformations that we urgently and collectively need to achieve. So as you mentioned, my role, I'm the investor engagement lead at the World Benchmarking Alliance. And my background is very much working with mainly institutional investors. So as you mentioned, the World Benchmarking Alliance, we produce publicly available benchmarks that measure and compare company performances. So yes, this looks across environmental, social and governance topics. And we do this through a systems lens. And that's a kind of a way to look at the private sector and their contribution to achieving these sustainable development goals. So we're developing these benchmarks as tools. These are tools that are used by governments, by civil societies, by academics, individuals and of course, investors, so that they can engage with companies. They're also tools for companies themselves so that they can take credible and concrete steps to tackle the global, social and enormous environmental challenges that the world's facing today. So linking that to your question in this context is really key of, you know, why does that all matter to investors? I think it's really important on this to start by saying that obviously there are different motivations for different investors. But if I just run through a few of the kind of triggers and push and pulls, which we're seeing at the moment, I think the first one is clearly client demand. You know, investors are for-profit organizations. And when there's a client push towards this, then there's a big shift. So if I'm thinking here about the asset managers, when the asset owner clients move on topics, then there's a clear shift. But also for the asset owners, for instance, pension funds with their beneficiaries calling for more action around this. So just to give one example of that, when asset owners set net zero targets, for instance, at the end of 2020, then we saw such an accelerated shift amongst the asset manager community, who then really many followed quite quickly after their clients were moving. I think another key motivation to talk about is the regulation and policy developments, and that's linked to investors' own activities. So I'm actually based in Europe and in London. And one of the key regulatory shifts, which happened, but it's had a global impact because any investor that's selling a product in Europe needs to now follow the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation. So for sure, the SFDR. And what's really key here is that that regulation is not just about demonstrating that you're actually considering financially material aspects of ESG in your process. It does that, but it's pushing investors to go beyond. To actually considering, you know, the impacts, the assess the impacts and act, and then disclose on sustainable outcomes, particularly if you're developing any product with a sustainability or responsible investment label. But it's even going beyond that around the kind of do no significant harm for more and more, that's going to move to all investors. The other policy and staying on that angle, the policy and regulations for the real economy sectors. So if there's a shift, say, in an environmental limit for, take an example of the chemical sector or carbon tax across the whole industry or even on social issues, things like a change in the wage, the minimum wage within a country. This is in turn incentivizing investors to fund companies that are already meeting these standards or that are at least transitioning to be more in line with these societal expectations or planetary boundaries. So stepping aside from the policy and another motivation, and I think aside from those investors that kind of are impact orientated, if you speak to any investor today, there's really more and more recognition that physical sustainability impacts are actually becoming more financially material risk and opportunity for the portfolio companies. So, for instance, water stress is a real constraint for some beverage companies as an example, or extreme weather events are clearly causing significant disruption and changes in costs and modeling expectations for insurance companies, just to give some examples. Final reason or push for why investors are looking at these topics and considering this more and more, some investors are what we'd call purpose driven. So historically, that might have been smaller impact firms, but I am seeing increasingly the mentality of balancing financial and sustainability returns is something actually being embedded into larger investor approaches. So, of course, rounding off on that first part of your question, it's a combination of all the above. But I think the key point to say is that this now matters to investors. It just makes business sense for them to be developing and implementing and considering this in their strategies. Saying all of this, there's still a long way to go. I'm not saying all investors today are now focused on real world outcomes, sustainability considerations in their whole process, but there's clearly a big shift underway in this industry. And that very much links to the second part of your question. So, how can investors and companies work together? So just going back to the work of the World Benchmarking Alliance, we work directly with companies and we want to support them in the transition. We actively encourage them to be part of the research process. We talk to, say, sustainability teams, IR teams, sometimes the C-suite or board level, to really encourage them and help them on this journey. But we don't just directly work with companies. It's maybe a giveaway in the title of our organization, but we're an alliance. So we work with allies and a whole multi-stakeholder approach. So the Alliance now represents 260 organizations. And what's key is that these are actors at global level, regional level, local level, all using the benchmarks in ways that can really encourage and shape the private sector. As I say, that's very much embedded as kind of a multi-stakeholder approach. But we know that investors in particular have a significant influence over companies' behavior. So my day-to-day role within the World Benchmarking Alliance is then working with investors, to that's asset owners, asset managers, small and large, but those that in total do have a really global footprint. And we actually, we know quite a young organization just coming up to three years. And at the beginning of this year, we did our first independent review. And what was quite striking was one of the findings and just to quote something here, it said that the vast majority of the stakeholders that were consulted, notably the interviewed companies, see investors as the most important stakeholder group. So they went on to say that financial institutions, especially large institutional players, have a pivotal role to play in mobilizing the private sector in support of the SDGs. And they can of course do this in different ways. It's in capital allocation. So the way where they put their money, there's through engagement, active ownership, that's voting, engaging, you're encouraging their holdings to align or adjust in a certain direction. But there's also policy, policy advocacy in support of more sustainable finance regulation. So these are the different angles of how investors can then work to influence companies. And just to give a very specific example of that, and I'll go back to the seafood as an example around this. And we launched the first seafood index, which covers 30 companies, the world's most influential seafood companies. And we did already have some investors and actually investor service providers, so a key link in that ecosystem, who were asking for the data, who were asking questions about how to use this information so they could integrate it into that process. We also had an investor who engaged with one of the companies in the index to encourage them to get involved, who had previously been unresponsive to improve basically. And the exciting thing is, then when you see the next step, which is actually for us, we'll launch the second seafood index. And with these findings, we'll be able to really amplify amongst multi-stakeholder, but particularly with investors, and not just kind of global approach, but the investors in those companies. And the way that we can do that, when you say how do we link investors and companies, we can link to themes which investors are interested in. So for instance, at the moment, a big or growing investor or emerging investor interest topic is around nature, biodiversity. So we can link something like the seafood findings to this emerging investment theme. Another area of interest from an investment point of view is around protein diversification. With looking at consumer trends, we know that some consumers are moving away from certain meat proteins towards other protein sources, including seafood. So that again, it presents an investment opportunity in seafood companies, but we want to ensure that those investors are then aware of the risk and opportunities, but then influencing the companies to address key topics like in this sector, it's around food insecurity, human rights or illegal fishing for instance. So to link it right back, I know to the theme of the panel, and I just kind of conclude on this, I think absolutely agree it's absolutely key that we're not just talking about these topics and even more than that, we're not just seeing companies and investors making kind of just high level commitments to this, but we need to have mechanisms which assess progress. That's really why I joined and moved from working within and the investment community to the World Benchmarking Alliance so that we could have this type of accountability tools that don't just encourage companies to change, but also that we can track that progress. So hopefully I've kicked us off talking about why and how investors are working with companies. I can then turn now to Kirsten. So Kirsten companies get a lot of recognition for their commitments, say commitments to sourcing sustainable seafood as an example or reducing their emissions or say moving towards a net positive water footprint. How can we help these companies think beyond these commitments to actually achieve the change on the ground and how do we address those companies that just still aren't taking the sustainability issue seriously? Great, well thanks for the question, Nikki. I think much of what I'm gonna touch on is very complimentary to what you just shared. So really great to have your insights moving into some additional thoughts. So I think to your first question about sort of the commitments and are these enough? So I'd say while it's encouraging to see many companies recognize the importance of these sustainability issues through these public facing commitments and they make a lot of headlines for sure, of course the devil is really in the details. And importantly, commitments and target setting really needs to be backed up with those evidence-based ambitious changes to really business as usual, both in operations but importantly also in supply chains. So what exactly do those changes look like? Well, there really is no one answer and each sector really has different needs and different exposures to sustainability related risks. But one piece of work that Ceres put out last fall called our Ceres Roadmap 2030 is really diving in more deeply. And as the name suggests providing a roadmap to what exactly it really takes for companies to meet sustainability targets, both looking at today and sort of what the baseline should be but also over the next decade, what is gonna really be needed to stabilize the climate to protect water resources and natural resources and importantly to build adjusted inclusive economy. So it really maps out these critical steps companies should be taking in areas like corporate governance, strategic planning and disclosure and really provides that framework or guidance. We also contemplate the concept of resource positivity and that it's really no longer enough for companies to just reduce their water use or eliminate their own pollution but we really need to be moving more on the trajectory of becoming resource positive and giving back more than they take for the planet in order to really ensure that we're gonna have sustainable global water supplies moving forward. So in short to the first part of your question it's really companies need to move from commitment to impacts and really from word to deed. So just to give a few examples of sort of how series is diving in more deeply to sort of get at this issue and really trying to realize that impact on the ground. One example is on the climate side. So our new ambition 2030 initiative is really working to move the highest emitting sectors including transportation, electric power, banking and food among others. And we're really aiming to transform these key sectors by moving these emitters to not only ratchet up their ambition through corporate climate goals but also very importantly and germane to this discussion is to really create robust transition action plans and provide disclosure about how they're achieving interim targets by 2030. Another example putting on my water program hat is the series water program has dug in more deeply on the types of commitments and implementation that is really necessary around sustainable agriculture and achieving those positive water outcomes and also climate co-benefits. So to this end series and WWF launched the AgWater Challenge which really helps companies make specific and detailed commitments really diving into the supply chain and those high risk commodities and those high risk watersheds to really narrowing in on the most effective scope of action to produce the change that we're all looking for. And I will note sort of on this same vein, series frequently benchmarks companies to really understand how they're performing on sustainability issues. And this can serve as an important tool for companies and investors. And one such report is about to be released later this month called Feeding Ourselves Thirsty and this really benchmarks agricultural companies on sets of recommended actions that they can take to improve their impact on water. So stay tuned for that. It'll be out in a few weeks but really is an important tool to see sort of how these commitments are playing out on the ground. So just, again, it's really critical that companies are making the right types of commitments in the right timeframe and combined with implementation plans to really achieve the impact. But to the second part of your question on how to get companies to move past the commitments and even get those companies that are really far behind the curve in terms of sustainability challenges, for example, managing water. And this is going back to what Nikki, you just shared with us. This is where the investment community really becomes an especially critical stakeholder. And again, speaking to this with my water hat on, investor support can really go beyond sustainable investments and things like water solutions. This is incredibly important obviously but also thinking about these issues through the risk lens. So in this case, water risk. And just to put a little more color on this point, in a series analysis, we found that at least 50% of the stocks listed in each of the four major indices were in industries with medium to high water risk. So this really means that investors are at the crosshairs of the global water crisis and really need to be part of the solution in many ways. And so as was shared earlier, as owners of these companies, investors really need to consider this risk in decision-making, but also through active engagements and being positive change makers with companies. So to do just that, series launched a community of practice group called the series investor water hub back in 2015. And this group has grown exponentially. We have over 140 investors now with representing 36 trillion in assets under management. So we do see some positive trends but we need a lot more investors under our tent. So a few more pieces of the puzzle, I'd like to just dive in more deeply on sort of how investors can go about doing this. Nikki touched on some of these elements such as getting engaged in policy and regulation. And that's of course really critical. Series is doing a lot on the active ownership side. This is really a critical tool and we see investor engagements and dialogues and proxy voting on many sustainability issues in really every sector of the economy. So what does this really look like in practice? Well, just to pull out one example that series is working on right now is series and our partner group, Fair have engaged with fast food companies to really dive in more deeply and really get the fast food companies to take these water risk and climate risks seriously and in particular within their protein supply chain where we're seeing the major impacts to water quality and supply. So we have 90 investors working with us on this initiative and have seen some positive outcomes there as well. But moving forward, like I said, the water crisis is really playing out at a dizzying pace and we've made some good progress, but we need more investors under the tent. So series to really accomplish this and hopefully drive more scale with some of this investor work, series recently launched our valing water finance initiative. And this is really a new approach designed to move capital markets to view water as the financial risk that it truly is and really act on it accordingly as well. So we're in the process of building out this initiative and just briefly I'll just really go over quickly the four main elements of the initiative. So first we've developed a task force. So this is an advisory council of leading pension funds and asset managers as well that are helping us really signal support for the need of engagement on water issues. Secondly, we're helping to build the scientific foundation. So with advice from a scientific advisory panel and a principal investigator, we're really compiling the scientific and academic researches out there to really help investors build the case internally for why they should act. In addition to this, we're building out some financial materiality work and honing in on the meat sector and the apparel sector to really highlight the risks of failing to act on these issues and the investment opportunities for acting now. And then finally, we're co-developing a set of what we're calling valing water corporate expectations, a challenge that we've really seen as many investors really don't have that clear North Star or framework on water. So really don't know exactly where to engage with companies. And so we're trying to change this with co-developing these expectations that will give investors that playbook for what they need to begin these important critical conversations with companies. And then ultimately these ask will form the foundation of key investors engagement efforts with these polluting companies and set the foundation for what we will be launching next year, which is a global investor engagement initiative really engaging with key sectors and key companies to change their practices on the ground with how they are managing water. So more to come on that, but a lot of exciting activity and we're excited to have more and more investors joining us in this really critical journey ahead. So with that, I'd like to now turn it over to Maggie. And so Maggie, turning to you, I was hoping you could share more about how sectors can shift from investing in niche opportunities to the transformation of the system at scale. Thanks, Kirsten. Many of the themes from my fellow panelists comments really carry over to EDF's work on climate smart agriculture. I'm sure many of you know that agriculture is one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change. It depends on our natural resources and unpredictable weather conditions and climate makes all of that so much more difficult. I've seen that firsthand where I live in North Carolina where some of the farmers that I've collaborated with over the years were hit by two 500 year storms in the span of just three years. And that's really hard to come back from. At the same time, agriculture is also a major source of emissions and not just carbon dioxide, but also the very potent emissions of methane and nitrous oxide. So climate smart agriculture seeks to both build the resilience of agricultural production and also tamp down some of those emissions and even sequester carbon. At EDF Environmental Defense Fund, we work in partnership with farmers, the supply chain, financial institutions and policymakers to support farmers in adopting those climate smart agricultural practices. And it's been really interesting to hear about some of the supply chain work of my other panelists. EDF is also well known for its corporate partnerships and our work to improve supply chain sustainability. I've seen that firsthand in my time at EDF. I've been here now for about a decade and really have seen how it went from very few companies in the food and agriculture supply chain looking at their major commodity supply change as areas where they could improve sustainability to companies like Walmart and others making major commitments about reducing their impacts to now where there's really sustained movement and programs being implemented by many major companies trying to figure out how to reduce emissions and also have multiple other benefits to water, biodiversity, et cetera, throughout their commodity supply chains. However, we are also now at a stage where our supply chain initiatives have brought us far but they haven't gotten us all the way. We've seen that supply chain action is necessary but not sufficient to transform the agricultural system at scale. And so now many of these companies are turning to the finance sector to figure out how to expand their efforts. And we are working at that intersection to engage financial institutions in supporting climate smart agriculture. So what does that look like? First, we realized that even though climate smart farming practices are not new there was still a lot of uncertainty around the return on investment for those practices and the economic profile of them. And that was really creating a bottleneck for investment in that space. This became really clear to me when we have a farmer advisory group about 20 farmers most of them larger scale, grain farmers, very committed conservationists, very business savvy and they came to us and they wanted to better understand the impact of conservation adoption, climate smart farming practices on their own budgets. And that really surprised me. If they didn't know that pointed me to the fact that there was a much bigger problem there and that there was a really an information disconnect between these well-known practices with well-known environmental benefits and what they meant financially for the farmers. So we got to work with some of those farmers as well as with agricultural accountants and land grant universities to try to disentangle the impact of those practices within the farm budgets. And what we found was that for many of these practices such as no-till and cover crops and reduce input use diverse crop rotations, it's not a huge yield boost. It's not massive premiums for selling their grains. It's really about cost savings and reducing risk over time. And so that really understanding in depth that financial profile of the practices we're trying to advance at the farm level really informs our work on financial solutions. So once we improved our understanding of the financial return and the barriers to climate smart agriculture, we could turn to figuring out those financial solutions that work for farmers and their finance providers. And also what type of finance providers we should engage. Our main focus at EDF is on agricultural lenders for a few reasons. First, ag lenders or banks are essential to financing agriculture. Farming is an industry where you spend most of your money at the beginning of the year and then on seeds and inputs and other things. And then you don't make money until you harvest your crops. And so you can see how credit is essential to bridging that gap. Second, what we learned about the return on investment of those climate smart practices really excluded some of the high return seeking capital. This made us look towards farmers existing financial partners to see whether we could make the case for them to engage more proactively in supporting climate smart agriculture. Third, we found that lenders were really interested in our data. You can get a lender excited with a really great enterprise budget listing out different impacts and showing cause and effect. And so we found that they really were hungry to better understand how these different practices affected farmers. And fourth, we felt like agricultural lenders are already financing agriculture at scale. So if we're able to shift that source of capital to integrate the value of climate smart practices, it would have a huge impact. When we look at the agricultural lending sector in the United States, it's made up of a few segments. First is the farm credit system, which provides about 40% of the debt to farmers in the US. And that's a government sponsored enterprise, a system of farmer cooperatives that provide financing to farmers for things like operating expenses and land and equipment. Next is commercial banks, which also provides another roughly 40% of farm debt. And this sector is really interesting because it's made up of some major banks that you would have heard their names like Wells Fargo and Robo Bank, but the vast majority of that lending is done by smaller community local banks. And then another important actor to mention is the US Department of Agriculture's Farm Services Agency, which provides a very small portion of overall agricultural debt, but they have a specific mission to support underserved farmers like women or minorities who historically have often been denied access to credit. And so while when we were digging into the sector and getting to know lenders, we learned that even though agriculture is one of the most at risk sectors from climate change, we found that the agricultural lending sector is really lagging in assessing their own climate risks, especially compared to other financial institutions and other sectors, and even more so in taking steps to address that risk through financing climate smart agriculture. So we got to work really engaging agricultural lenders through a variety of ways. First was just listening to them, getting to know them, understanding how they work and what the value is to them of engaging on this topic. And we found that while they are really focused on farmers' ability to repay their loans, often these relationships are long-term and rooted in a shared community and they do value the long-term profitability and also underlying value of farmland. Through that engagement, we were able to figure out what they were interested in and meet them where they are, including I have the opportunity to speak with 30 farm credit CEOs earlier this year and spend two hours with them trying to figure out what their role was and really understanding climate change and how they could respond to it and support their farmer clients in doing so. We've also developed market research. For example, we recently worked with a research firm called Beck Ag and also the Nature Conservancy and some companies, including Unilever and PepsiCo through the Midwest Row Crop Coalition. And we worked together to understand what the farmer demand was for loan products that supported them through the transition to climate smart agricultural practices. So here we were really looking at that transition and which sometimes can be three to five years for the farmers to test things, implement trial and error and figure out how they can profitably adopt these practices. And then we worked with ag lenders to develop a model transition loan product that would support farmers through a reduced interest rate or through a longer term, since most input loans are usually just one year in length. So we worked with them to develop that model product. And then we went out and tested it with 100 Iowa farmers. And what we found was that there's very strong farmer interest in this type of loan product. So one either a cost share incentive or an interest rate incentive was included, half of the farmers were interested in participating in this. And that shows us that this middle segment of farmers, who are not the early adopters but who are trying to figure out how they can profitably adopt climate smart agricultural practices, they're interested in this kind of incentive and this kind of relationship with their lender in order to expand their adoption of practices. Last, so what this really shows is that we have lender's attention at this point, but I think they're at the same place that the food and act supply chain was, five to 10 years ago where they know this is an issue, but they're not sure what to do about it. So how do we move them to action? There are three main ways, data, risk sharing and policy and I'll just touch on them quickly. So with data really building upon this work to quantify the financial impact on the farm level, we're trying to scale that up through partnerships with land grant universities and other finance providers to be able to show at large the value of these practices. With risk sharing, this is really where impact investment can come in. Lenders are interested, but they may not be able to put forward an innovative product on their own. So this is where either impact investors who are willing to put forward catalytic capital that's patient or more risk tolerant or where supply chain collaborations can really come in and help support a pilot project with a lender that's showing farmer demand for it and also collecting the data to prove that it works. And then last is policy. Agriculture finance is really at the nexus of agriculture policy and financial policy. And as we see where that goes in the United States with a lot of focus on climate smart agriculture and climate related financial risk, we know that ag lenders are really in the crosshairs and they have the opportunity to step forward and be proactive in creating solutions. So with that, I'm going to hand it back to Teresa and she's gonna close out. Great, thank you so much to all of our panelists. I thought this was a great session and thank you to the audience for listening. As we heard from everyone on this panel, investing in sustainable companies and companies looking to improve their sustainability is really, really valuable. But we also have an opportunity to think about how we use investment to sort of bring along the companies and the different enterprises that aren't there and even our peer investors who aren't there yet in terms of thinking about sustainability. And so this really is a challenge to investors to be an advocate for change, whether it's advocating within the companies you already work with and invest in and supporting them to become more sustainable or it's advocating at the policy level, whether it's regulatory reform for investments or for resource management that so many of these sustainable companies depend on. And so as we leave this session and as we attend other sessions in SOCAP, there's really a great opportunity to think about how do we get to a deeper level of just not talking about what needs to happen within the companies, within our investments, within our supply chains, but also thinking about what more we can do to really drive substantive change across the sector and globally. So thank you again for participating and thank you to our panelists.