Campaign group Business for Nature has accepted its first batch of strategies targeting a nature positive economy by 2030 from corporations based in the UK, France, and Taiwan, six months after launch .

The plans of pharmaceutical company GSK, household products firm Anne Veck, French luxury goods group Kering, utilities company ENGIE, and the Taiwan Cement Corporation have been published on the It’s Now for Nature website.

Some company submissions failed to meet the criteria, but their names will not be revealed, said Eva Zabey, CEO of Business for Nature.

“They have received feedback and we are encouraging them to refine their strategy and re-submit it to the campaign,” Zabey told Carbon Pulse.

“We hope to create a snowball effect to 2030 where more and more companies develop and publish a credible nature strategy.”

The five strategies, some of which were published last year, meet the criteria of the campaign:

• A materiality assessment to identify material impacts, dependencies, risks, and opportunities
• Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) targets aligned with material impacts, dependencies, risks, and opportunities
• Actions to achieve SMART targets, and to reduce negative impacts on nature
• C-suite or board responsibility for its delivery

Launched officially in November, the campaign also reviews plans against its Nature Strategy Handbook.

The review is a process-based assessment of whether the minimum requirements have been covered in the strategy, rather than an assessment of ambition or progress – as other organisations like CDP already do this work.

The campaign breaks down corporate plans into the key criteria for its website, alongside links to the full plan.

“This first batch of nature strategies offers companies a blueprint for what a credible strategy looks like and sends a strong signal for other companies to follow suit,” said Zabey.

“We want companies to share and learn from each other and improve while enabling less mature companies to leapfrog and quickly develop their own nature strategies.”

In October, Zabey said the campaign was a marathon rather than a sprint that might not see large numbers of corporations submitting strategies immediately after launch.

“It’s a little bit of a special campaign because you can’t just sign up to it. We’re not interested in commitments, in companies saying that they’re going to develop a strategy – we just want them to update their strategy,” Zabey told Carbon Pulse at the time.

On Tuesday, the Nature Positive Initiative announced a partnership with consultants EY and The Biodiversity Consultancy to establish metrics tailored to nature positive claims.

By Thomas Cox – t.cox@carbon-pulse.com

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