1. General

Category

Category

Finance / Credit Companies

2. Project Details

Company or Institution

NatureAlpha

Project

NatureAlpha Biodiversity & nature metrics platform

General description of the AI solution

NatureAlpha provides science-based analytics for investors on nature and biodiversity, powered by an R&D partnership with Oxford University, leading geospatial and machine learning technology. NatureAlpha’s ability to influence and redirect capital towards biodiversity preservation could have far-reaching effects for billions of global citizens. Declines in biodiversity alone threaten over 80% of SDG targets related to poverty, hunger, health, water, cities, climate, oceans, and land, leading to widespread systemic financial implications. $44 trillion of economic value generation – over half of the world’s total GDP – is moderately or highly dependent on nature. Therefore, biodiversity loss has critical implications for humanity, from the collapse of food and health systems to the disruption of entire supply chains.

Filling the gap in investor asset-level ESG data metrics for user-friendly, robust metrics on nature, NatureAlpha aims to democratise information on the nature impacts of our investment decisions, at scale, for the first time. Because of this, NatureAlpha’s dedicated platform enables investors to support a sustainable future for the next generation through their investment decisions, creating a healthier planet and a healthier society.

NatureAlpha uses AI to gather data on companies' relationships with nature, and uses automated sentiment analysis (including Latent Dirichlet Allocation) to categorise them. Using a causal chain model (ontology) to categorise mentions within a Drivers-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework, we then use a Bayesian Network to populate this model, with data-driven learning about the relationships between the model's nodes to ensure as much structural flexibility as possible.

NatureAlpha’s ability to influence and redirect capital towards biodiversity preservation could have far-reaching effects for billions of global citizens. Declines in biodiversity alone threaten over 80% of SDG targets related to poverty, hunger, health, water, cities, climate, oceans, and land, leading to widespread systemic financial implications. $44 trillion of economic value generation – over half of the world’s total GDP – is moderately or highly dependent on nature. Therefore, biodiversity loss has critical implications for humanity, from the collapse of food and health systems to the disruption of entire supply chains.

Website

https://www.naturealpha.ai

Organisation

Nature Alpha

3. Aspects

Excellence and Scientific Quality: Please detail the improvements made by the nominee or the nominees’ team or yourself if your applying for the award, and why they have been a success.

NatureAlpha provides science-based analytics for investors on nature and biodiversity, powered by an R&D partnership with Oxford University. Filling the gap in investor asset-level ESG data metrics for user-friendly, robust metrics on nature, NatureAlpha aims to democratise information on the nature impacts of our investment decisions, at scale, for the first time. Because of this, NatureAlpha’s dedicated platform enables investors to support a sustainable future for the next generation through their investment decisions, creating a healthier planet and a healthier society.

NatureAlpha uses AI to gather data on companies' relationships with nature, and uses automated sentiment analysis (including Latent Dirichlet Allocation) to categorise them. Using a causal chain model (ontology) to categorise mentions within a Drivers-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework, we then use a Bayesian Network to populate this model, with data-driven learning about the relationships between the model's nodes to ensure as much structural flexibility as possible. Combined with this we are currently pioneering a geospatial data layering technique in partnership with multiple AI-based entities. We will also work with others who have been developing traffic-light systems for impact assessment based on manual literature reviews to integrate our AI-powered approach with their systems. These technologies complement our core insight-generating model. Our platform enables assessment of the biodiversity impact of companies, via automated AI processes and informed by expert understanding of the processes generating biodiversity impact.

Our engagement strategy involves private and public sector interactions, with an emphasis on the implementation of AI for solving one of the world’s greatest challenges. We are part of the World Bank & EU backed Finance for Biodiversity initiative and the Royal Foundation’s United for Wildlife, which ensures that media and outreach activities will be supported globally. Currently our MVP is in build, and will be launched in Q4 2021. From an IP perspective, provisions are made to ensure that critical IP is protected legally, and any partnership arrangements are both implemented in this light and reviewed regularly.

Scaling of impact to SDGs: Please detail how many citizens/communities and/or researchers/businesses this has had or can have a positive impact on, including particular groups where applicable and to what extent.

There are three key beneficiaries of positive impact from Nature Alpha. First, given that the World Economic Forum ranks biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse as one of the top five threats humanity will face in the next decade, NatureAlpha’s ability to influence and redirect capital towards biodiversity preservation could have far-reaching effects for billions of global citizens. Declines in biodiversity alone threaten over 80% of SDG targets related to poverty, hunger, health, water, cities, climate, oceans, and land, leading to widespread systemic financial implications. $44 trillion of economic value generation – over half of the world’s total GDP – is moderately or highly dependent on nature. Therefore, biodiversity loss has critical implications for humanity, from the collapse of food and health systems to the disruption of entire supply chains.

Secondly, from a business perspective, the finance sector is critical for facilitating the transition to a low-carbon world, as set out explicitly in the Paris Agreement. The challenge requires a system level change in the allocation of the $110trn global assets under management, and investors have not yet been empowered in mobilising this shift towards biodiversity aware decision-making. NatureAlpha’s application of cutting-edge science, ensuring that some $110trn of investment capital is influenced towards biodiversity-aware strategies and companies using a science-based model to nature-based risk and impact, therefore has systemic impact spanning a diverse range of businesses. The success of the product will be measured in terms of 1) negative impact mitigated and 2) positive impact created determined by geospatial data; 3) the assets under management invested using the tool.

Finally, our unique R&D partnership with scientists at Oxford University, NGOs, The Royal Foundation and open-source geospatial data providers like Restor provide a fertile ground for scaling with researchers. For example, our world-leading land-based satellite imaging partners are able to accurately map time-series data, showing relative trends for investors to visualise their impacts both positively and negatively over time.

Scaling of AI solution: Please detail what proof of concept or implementations can you show now in terms of its efficacy and how the solution can be scaled to provide a global impact ad how realistic that scaling is.

One of NatureAlpha’s most exciting aspects is in our scalability; we are extremely conscious of the unique opportunities we have to grow our product into the world’s most intelligent biodiversity analysis platform. We aim for NatureAlpha to be operationalized across a potential ~$1Trn of invested assets on a tier one investment platform in the next 6-8 months, tracking investors’ impact on nature for the first time.NatureAlpha is therefore able to catalyse and scale the rapid, at-scale mobilization of global investment required to deliver on the SDGs. To achieve this, we have also built strategic partnerships with world-leading investment platforms, the World Bank and EU finance for biodiversity working groups, asset managers, the Royal Foundation’s Financial Services Taskforce, and data groups such as Restor and Amplyfi, which enable us to deliver greater accuracy, rigour and scale in our proposition to our clients.

Our proposition demonstrates the power of AI techniques to propel science-based solutions directed towards the achievement of the UNSDGs.
The integration of AI gives NatureAlpha a sustainable competitive advantage over non-AI based metrics due to the volume of data we can ingest in our analysis of companies, industries and portfolios worldwide. As such, we have the potential to be a global leader in the supply of accurate, real-time data which positively influences investment decisions in the interest of SDG12, 14, 15. We understand our position in the financial industry as the ‘North-Star’ of biodiversity-sensitive investment, which will be a critical pillar in averting the wider implications of the climate crisis in a post-climate world. Along with new clients in the asset management industry, comes radical new scale dimensions for our product. This is not simply a strategic or profit-based aim, but a commitment to powering the agenda of biodiversity at scale for the $110tn investment market worldwide.

Ethical aspect: Please detail the way the solution addresses any of the main ethical aspects, including trustworthiness, bias, gender issues, etc.

Ethics meets our AI technology at multiple levels and from all angles. As expert Clara Durodié explores, governance and AI are inextricably linked concepts. As she suggests, we ensure our technology is ‘explainable, auditable and accountable’. We achieve this through a dedicated ethical strategy. From a governance perspective, we hold internal design summits to challenge the product design from a user perspective, with elements such as data, legal and compliance fronts. One of our key findings is that if we continue to design our product as an objective tool , we avoid the challenge of creating subjective decision processes which eventually influence major financial decisions. Moreover, our cybersecurity strategy ensures that our data, especially that of our clients, is protected as a business priority.

We aim to reinvest a percentage of our profits into our academic AI research partners, which gives us credibility as an ‘AI for good’ player, as well as helping us secure greater accreditation for our goal to become a B-CORP certified company in the near future. We perceive our service as an opportunity for the planet’s financial structures to finally take data-driven decisions in the pursuit of a more biodiversity-sensitive economy, and by virtue of this, to actively and powerfully influence the SDGs.