The rise of the ‘nature-positive’ economy
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The race is on to reverse global biodiversity loss. Global wildlife populations have declined by almost 70 per cent over the last 50 years, natural ecosystems have declined by 47 per cent on average, and we’re overusing our planet’s resources by at least 75 per cent. Last year, 27 of the world’s largest nature conservation organisations (from The Nature Conservancy to WWF International) came together to launch the new Nature Positive Initiative with the goal of halting and reversing nature loss by 2030. The World Economic Forum has called for a shift towards a ‘nature-positive economy’ and, from next year, new EU legislation means that nearly 50,000 companies will have to report their climate and environmental impact.
However, a recent review of 400 global businesses by the World Benchmarking Alliance found that just five per cent have an understanding of their true impact on nature. Researchers at the University of Oxford’s Oxford Martin School have also highlighted the challenges faced by organisations when it comes to delivering ambitious nature-positive targets, particularly in the absence of wider systems change. ‘Biodiversity conservation is fundamentally really difficult, much more so than other sustainability targets such as carbon emissions reduction,’ says Sam Sinclair, co-founder and director of Biodiversify.
The problem, he explains, is that biodiversity lacks an overarching metric. ‘The value of biodiversity is so context-dependent.’ He gives the example of an invasive, non-native UK species, such as the rhododendron, which should be eradicated from British woodlands but is protected in its natural East Himalayan habitat. When it comes to improving a company’s impact on biodiversity, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. ‘The amount of variation between companies is absolutely enormous,’ says Sinclair. ‘It’s astonishing how much they vary in every possible way in terms of their supply chain, their culture, their approach to decision making, the whole lot.’ In some cases, he says, the changes organisations need to make can have quite a dramatic effect on their business model.
This means that companies are going to need help to figure out what actions to take. Sinclair, a researcher in conservation biology with more than a decade of experience working in wildlife conservation, says that he founded Biodiversify in 2018 after recognising that he had an opportunity to help people make better conservation choices. Today, the biodiversity consultancy develops corporate biodiversity strategies for companies in the fashion, food and drink, and mining industries.
There are a range of different reasons why a company would want to improve its relationship with biodiversity. ‘From a cynical perspective,’ says Sinclair, ‘companies are now waking up to the fact that if they don’t stop impacting the systems on which they depend, their businesses will cease to operate.’ He points to the world’s cotton market, 24 per cent of which comes from an extremely climate-vulnerable region of India, as an example. ‘From a business perspective, the loss of that market would be a major problem.’ However Sinclair says that, from his experience, a lot of businesses have taken the issue very seriously and genuinely want to do the right thing.
It’s inevitable, says Sinclair, that mistakes will be made over the next few years. ‘The speed at which this area of suitability has progressed is breathtaking, especially when you consider it took us 15 years to get to where we are today with carbon emissions. We were the first organisation to publish a detailed corporate biodiversity strategy in 2020. Now, four years on, companies left, right and centre are doing it and there’s a new biodiversity startup every week.’
Next year, as EU companies begin to report on their environmental impacts, the sudden influx of new data on the private sector’s impacts on biodiversity that will be readily available will be revolutionary in helping companies to make improvements. ‘If there are parts of the economy that are fundamentally unsustainable,’ Sinclair adds, ‘it’s going to become really obvious very soon.