The Public Sector Pension Investment Board is engaging WSP Global Inc. to develop a consistent methodology for analyzing the environmental impact of its natural resources assets.
The consultancy firm will conduct a detailed climate analysis of the portfolio, which includes more than three million hectares of land across more than 400 properties based in six countries. Its operations on these properties include the cultivation and processing of timber, tree nuts, fruit, grain, cotton and meat.
WSP’s primary objective will be to establish a portfolio-wide baseline of PSP Investments’ greenhouse gas emissions using farm-level data, according to a press release, which noted this information will be used to develop a decarbonization roadmap that PSP Investments will provide to investee businesses.
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The second objective will be to determine the sequestration capabilities of the natural resources. WSP aims to determine how much carbon is extracted from the atmosphere and stored in vegetation and soil. To do this, the consultancy firm will need to devise new methodologies to consistently quantify and report biogenic carbon dioxide removals and storage, as no widely accepted approach exists.
In the release, Marc Drouin, senior managing director and global head of natural resources at PSP Investments, noted the investment organization is among the world’s largest owners of agricultural and timber assets and is eager to understand agricultural and timberland spaces can play in greenhouse gas mitigation efforts.
“Farmland and forestry assets carry significant potential to support global climate mitigation and adaptation efforts, including through their carbon sequestration potential. This ground-breaking project with WSP will give us the detailed, farm-by-farm information we need to help our platforms map out a path to global net zero.”
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