The world needs nature to thrive
Nature underpins our wellbeing and the real economy. From clean water and fertile soils to pollination and flood protection, the ecosystem services it provides are essential to supply chains, industrial productivity, and consumer markets worldwide.
In this context, biodiversity can be understood as the state of nature: the variety of living organisms and their interactions within ecosystems, which together determine how well nature functions and continues to support life and economic activity.
While some human activities have co‑produced and sustained ecosystems, others have led to significant alteration, degradation, or loss of biodiversity and ecosystem integrity. Primary drivers of this degradation are changes in land and sea-use, over-exploitation of natural resources, such as freshwater, climate change, pollution, and invasive alien species.
Our approach to nature
As a financial institution, we have an important role to play in helping our clients reduce their pressures on nature. To address the growing environmental urgency on topics such as biodiversity, pollution, and water, we have developed transition actions to guide our strategy. This includes gradually incorporating nature into our risk frameworks, client engagement, and financing strategies, in line with our broader sustainability ambition. Our nature approach is informed by international frameworks and agreements, including the goals and targets outlined in the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). In line with our climate approach, we focus on three action areas that also guide our nature ambition:
1. Drive down pressure on natures
We help our clients to drive down their pressures on nature, such as deforestation and pollution, by managing associated risks and impacts, and through client engagement.
Our approach to managing ecosystem risks focuses on strategies like reducing, avoiding, accepting, or transferring risk. These measures are embedded in policy updates and procedures across risk categories. Sector-agnostic and sector-specific tools integrate nature related risks into ESG due diligence, referencing frameworks like TNFD, SBTN, and GBF.
ING’s policy seeks to avoid financing activities that damage critical ecosystems, such as operations in protected areas (e.g., UNESCO sites, Ramsar wetlands) or illegal deforestation. Sector-specific minimum standards apply in high-risk industries, including prohibiting Arctic offshore oil and gas exploration and banning the use of endangered species for testing. These areas and activities are elaborated in our nature and biodiversity stance and in our ESR policy framework.
2. Build up sustainable solutions
We build up solutions that support nature and biodiversity, including financing nature-based solutions.
We aim to support our clients in their alignment with global nature goals through our financing and engagement. We start with Wholesale Banking sectors that have the greatest impacts on nature. Our focus includes financing restoration, improving the efficient use of natural resources such as water and land, and supporting products and technologies that restore, regenerate, and promote circularity.
ING is exploring opportunities to support nature positive financing through the Transition Accelerator, its newly established department, which focuses on developing innovative solutions for the climate transition. These efforts complement our work on deforestation by enabling reforestation and ecosystem restoration. We achieve this through financing instruments like sustainability-linked loans, which reward clients for measurable improvements in biodiversity and land use.
3. Include everyone by raising awareness, enabling clients and communities to take action, and embedding nature-related considerations across our business
We work with external stakeholders to improve knowledge, standards, and methodologies for nature-related finance. Here we work together with UN PRB, align with the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) and continue to partner with academia to advance related research.
For further information, please refer to our sustainability statement in our annual report.
Our deforestation approach
Our greatest influence lies in financing global Wholesale Banking clients engaged in high-risk commodities (e.g., cattle, palm oil, soy, cocoa, and coffee). Although ING is not in scope of the EU Deforestation Regulation, we apply a dedicated engagement approach to address deforestation and ecosystem conversion.
At ING, deforestation is addressed as part of the bank’s broader environmental, social and governance (ESG) risk management framework whereby deforestation‑related risks are identified, assessed and managed through existing risk‑based processes. To further strengthen these processes and address identified information gaps, ING has implemented a targeted assessment and engagement approach to deforestation (i.e., our deforestation approach), providing enhanced insights and supporting more effective engagement.
As per our deforestation approach, we engage in a risk-based manner with clients active in high-risk commodities i.e., cattle, palm oil, soy, cocoa, or coffee. We assess whether these clients have put in place no-deforestation and no-ecosystem conversion commitments. We support them to put in place actions and targets towards full traceability in their supply chains, with the aim of removing deforestation risks from their production and value chain. More information can be found in our deforestation stance.
Looking ahead
To explore how banks can begin to assess the feasibility of setting impact-based nature targets, ING worked with Oliver Wyman on dedicated research. This included developing a white paper on the taxonomy of nature targets, supported by a proof of concept across two high-impact sectors, and examples of potential portfolio-level targets. The aim was to contribute to the dialogue on science aligned approaches, building on frameworks such as the Global Biodiversity Framework, TNFD, and the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN)
Through our approach to nature, we aim to take meaningful steps towards halting and reversing nature loss. The economy is in transition, and our clients are navigating this change at different stages. While we already finance many sustainable activities, a significant share of our financing continues to be linked to activities that place pressure on nature. Our role is to support our clients through engagement, advice and financing, helping them move towards more nature positive outcomes. We are committed to continuing this journey together.