This paper introduces a new measure of a firm's negative impact on biodiversity, the corporate biodiversity footprint, and studies whether it is priced in an international sample of stocks. On average, the biodiversity footprint does not explain the cross-section of stock returns.
However, a biodiversity footprint premium (higher returns for firms with larger footprints) began emerging after the Kunming Declaration (October 2021), which capped the first part of the recent UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15). Consistent with this finding, stocks with large footprints lost value in the days after the Kunming Declaration. Their stock prices dropped further after the Montreal Agreement (December 2022), which concluded the second part of the COP15. The results indicate that investors have started to require a risk premium upon the prospect of, and uncertainty about, future regulations to preserve biodiversity.
There is an ongoing debate about how proxy advisory firms affect corporate decisions. A major concern is that shareholders seeking to save costs use a...