Businesses seeking to minimise their impacts on biodiversity can simultaneously look to enhance ecosystems that function beyond their value chains, a webinar heard Thursday, pointing out an emerging agreement on what a “nature positive” business strategy really means.

The term “nature positive” has long been used by the private sector to describe businesses that ensure that their economic activities not only minimise and remove impact on nature, but also help restore and protect biodiversity elsewhere.

The expression has been somewhat contentious to date however, with some observers fearing it could facilitate greenwashing, allowing corporates to continue with their biodiversity damage by pointing to improvements made elsewhere.

For this reason amongst others, the term was stripped from the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) final agreement on the Global Biodiversity Framework reached at COP15 UN negotiations in Montreal last December.

But speakers at the Nature Positive Business webinar organised by biodiversity and climate analytics and credit provider Earthly said that the term is key to leveraging private investment towards protecting and restoring biodiversity-rich areas.

“More and more companies are coming to us looking to embed nature investments into their business that aren’t necessarily connected to their footprint, because they want to give back more to the world,” Oliver Bolton, co-founder and CEO of Earthly, said.

Other panellists noted that they too have been working with businesses that aim to be part of the biodiversity “solution” rather than simply minimising their role as part of the “problem”.

“Historically, concerned companies have responded to environmental concerns by implementing the mitigation hierarchy,” said PJ Stephenson, chair of the IUCN SSC species monitoring specialist group.

“But this is no longer going to be enough if we’re going to meet the CBDs targets. Unless we make an effort to actually improve the state of nature, we’re still going to be in trouble,” he added.

Stephenson said that companies are likely to increasingly look to spur nature-related positive impacts, either voluntarily or eventually through regulation, and that this will necessitate action both external to, and internal to value chains.

“You [need to] spend a bit of time unpacking what biodiversity means for you. Where does the rubber hit the road in terms of your operations and supply chains,” he said, noting this will be more complex for larger businesses with a web of suppliers and client partners.

In this respect Target 15 of the CBD is key, where companies must make concrete efforts to assess and report on these impacts.

But panellists noted that it is not necessary for companies to complete this footprinting process before beginning to implement a nature positive strategy.

Biodiversity credits, such as those emerging under standard body Plan Vivo, provide an opportunity for private actors to demonstrate positive actions on global nature-related goals.

Biodiversity credits are quickly emerging on the voluntary carbon market, with Plan Vivo’s nature credits already being piloted, and other major standard bodies such as Verra preparing their protocol launch as early as year-end.

“Biodiversity credits could provide an opportunity to shift the mindset of businesses or investors on how they perceive or view their responsibility to nature,” said Toral Shah, biodiversity coordinator at Plan Vivo Foundation.

This could include a new aim to go above-and-beyond the premise of ‘do no harm’, and actually immerse into this nature-positive movement, she said.

Shah noted that it will also be important to frame these nature credits, or certificates, in a holistic manner, where biodiversity results are weighed in conjunction with those related to climate and social impacts, including on Indigenous peoples and other local stakeholders.

“This holistic framing will be really key to be able to drive this movement forward,” she said.

By Katherine Monahan – katherine@carbon-pulse.com

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