Church Commissioners for England
 

The Church Commissioners' nature-based solutions strategy stood out for treating nature loss explicitly as a material investment risk and then translating that into measurable projects on the ground.

Judges pointed to memberships of the UN-convened Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance and the Finance for Biodiversity Pledge, quantified ESG targets, biodiversity assessed against the TNFD framework and tracked CO2 reduction, all wrapped in a risk management process that integrates ESG and biodiversity risk directly.

Returns improved from 3.8% to 5.9%, a result judges found reassuring evidence of the strategy's strength. What particularly impressed panellists was the honesty around limits: an acceptance that certain risks, such as policy and measurement uncertainty, cannot be fully mitigated and must simply be managed as far as possible, without delaying investment decisions on that basis. Judges described the approach as holistic and innovative, with clear transparency on potentially conflicting objectives. The ethos behind the portfolio, they felt, was genuinely reflected in the actions taken rather than left as stated intent.