ANSA Mer­chant Bank, along with the Crop­per Foun­da­tion, have launched the Nat­ur­al Cap­i­tal Grant Chal­lenge 2023.

This will al­low small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (SME’s) to win up to $100,000 in prizes to put to­wards their busi­ness’ sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tive, in­clud­ing the re­sources they need to set their plan in mo­tion and move their busi­ness for­ward.

Speak­ing at the event Gre­go­ry Hill, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of ANSA Mer­chant Bank said it part of the or­gan­i­sa­tion's sus­tain­abil­i­ty strat­e­gy.

"We are the first pri­vate sec­tor-led nat­ur­al cap­i­tal hub glob­al­ly. Nat­ur­al cap­i­tal is every liv­ing and non-liv­ing re­source de­rived from moth­er na­ture and as we know many busi­ness­es and gov­ern­ments are just ex­tract­ing but they are not re­plen­ish­ing and we need to do some­thing about that," Hill said.

On ex­plain­ing why bio­di­ver­si­ty was cho­sen, Hill said, "This de­ci­sion has to do with eco­nom­ics and fragili­ty. It had to do with food sta­bil­i­ty and the im­pact of nat­ur­al events on it."

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said bio­di­ver­si­ty stems from the im­pact cli­mate change is hav­ing on the en­vi­ron­ment gen­er­al­ly and on the re­gion in par­tic­u­lar.

"We are see­ing that the qual­i­ty of our agri­cul­tur­al pro­duce to the re­gion is not where it used to be. The gen­er­al food sup­ply and food sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the re­gion is at risk due to soil ero­sion, hur­ri­canes, flood­ing, bad plan­ning, bad farm­ing prac­tices, the clos­ing down of our sug­ar es­tates and agri­cul­tur­al in­dus­tries in ex­change for new hous­ing projects," Hill said.

Be­yond food, he said bio­di­ver­si­ty should al­so be en­cour­aged as well as preser­va­tion of what al­ready ex­ists.

"And not just here but al­so we would like to im­part that prin­ci­ple to the rest of the re­gion. It goes be­yond beach clean-ups and lit­ter­ing. It is meant to find pock­ets of our ecosys­tem for the re­gion that needs spe­cif­ic in­vest­ment in preser­va­tion," Hill added.

He said the de­sire to fight against cli­mate change, pro­mot­ing so­cial in­clu­sion and be­ing a good cor­po­rate cit­i­zen have been at the fore­front of the bank's dri­ve to de­liv­er val­ue to all stake­hold­ers as well as a more in­clu­sive group.