In brief:
- The notion of nature positive is gaining traction, with more companies making net-positive claims.
- But it’s virtually impossible for any company to be nature positive on its own. With a lack of definition, guidance and ways to measure nature impacts, claims are increasingly misleading.
- Businesses might not ever become nature-positive entities. But they do have an opportunity to contribute to a nature-positive world by adopting specific actions and nature-supportive pathways that align with the mitigation hierarchy avoid-reduce-restore-transform.
- This requires working collaboratively with other actors to tackle the full scope of nature (not just climate).
- It also means transforming production processes or business models to decouple business activity from natural resource use.
- Firms should also transparently communicate their nature-supportive targets and actions, progress to date, and the challenges preventing them going further.
Everybody’s talking about becoming nature positive. The race is on to reverse global biodiversity loss and address environmental degradation. Right now, we’re overusing our planet’s resources by at least 75%. Wildlife populations have declined by almost 70% in the last 50 years, and our natural ecosystems have declined by 47% on average.
The vision for nature positive is clear: We must create a world where the future state of nature — including complex, systemic change at scale.
Therefore, making nature positive claims or statements that can’t be evidenced should be avoided. Companies need to consider carefully what they can, and cannot, legitimately claim in relation to being nature positive.
Rather than claiming to be nature positive, focus instead on action — how you’re contributing to a nature-positive world by sharing the specific actions and nature-supportive pathways you have adopted to avoid and reduce impacts on nature, then to restore and regenerate nature and reverse the loss of biodiversity.
Becoming a nature-supportive business means applying ambitious, science-based and integrated action, both immediately and long-term. For those of you that haven’t done so, adopt nature-supportive pathways to create a single, common, unified goal for addressing nature as a company. This requires:
- Working collaboratively with other actors, across your value chain, within your sector and beyond
- Tackling the full scope of nature (not just climate) and covering the full scope of material impacts
- Better aligning your nature and climate actions to benefit from any synergies and avoid taking climate action that may actually harm nature (e.g., deforesting land for solar farms or switching to or producing biofuels, which have implications for land use, water resources and air quality)
- Transforming your production processes or business models to decouple business growth from resource consumption
- Avoiding new negative impacts
- Reducing ongoing impacts
- restoring what is being destroyed by your company
- Complementing these actions with additional conservation and restoration measures
- Introducing specific interim 2030 targets to create clarity on level of ambition and action required
- Transparently communicating about your baseline, targets and actions, progress to date, and the challenges preventing you from going further. Make sure your communication is specific (highlighting the hotspots you’re referring to), measurable (substantiating it with scientific data), relevant (focusing on impact areas that matter) and understandable (and easy to digest for consumers).
While businesses might not ever become nature-positive entities, they do have a real opportunity to contribute to a nature-positive world, one that is more regenerative and more restorative, and build resilience in their operations and supply chains for the long term.
