Seeing is believing

There are also targets that directly affect the private sector. Governments need to implement legislation or policy for the private sector to regularly monitor, assess and disclose risks, dependencies and impacts on nature. Governments have to simultaneously reform or eliminate the estimated $1.8trn of subsidies that are harmful for biodiversity, and reduce their total value by $500bn a year, by 2030.

Maelle Pelisson, advocacy director at Business for Nature (BfN), a coalition of business and conservation organisations, says that the overall trend since COP15
is moving in the right direction. For example, the EU has implemented the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which requires businesses to develop transition plans to ensure their strategies and business models refrain from causing significant harm to nature, and to quantify their potential risks and opportunities related to nature.

There has also been a 30% surge in companies committed to reporting their nature-related impacts in alignment with the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) since January 2024, with more than 400 organisations signed up globally. In addition, an increasing number of companies are developing and publishing nature strategies, which BfN has been promoting through its Now for Nature campaign, Pelisson says.

However, action is too slow, she adds. “A lot has happened, but it needs to be faster and more structural, both from governments and business.” In July, BfN published a statement – so far backed by 130 companies – calling for governments to urgently scale action at COP16.

Nicolas Poolen, senior manager of nature-positive finance at WWF, notes a similar trend from the financial sector. While financial institutions’ awareness of the need to finance nature protection and restoration and ensure that companies in their portfolios are doing the same, tangible changes have been slow, he says.

“Behind the scenes, many organisations are actively developing their strategies, and starting up initiatives. However, we haven’t necessarily seen the outputs from that yet,” he says.

In August, data released by the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) revealed that only 5% of all companies have assessed the impact of their operations on nature, and less than 1% have assessed their dependencies on nature.

Based on company data and performance in 2022 to 2024, average scores in assessments were 15 out of 100 for all sectors. Personal and household products had an average score of 26, and pharmaceuticals and biotechnology 20. The WBA cited the increased likelihood for companies in these sectors to be publicly owned, and their public-facing nature, as reasons for their increased action compared with others.

Eva Zabey, BfN chief executive, says that the WBA’s research strengthens the case for governments to mandate disclosure on nature, and for all companies to speed up and scale up action.

Disclosure and action

Businesses argue that disclosure is an essential step towards action. Thomas Maddox, global director of nature at disclosure body CDP, says that disclosure enables businesses to understand the risks they face from biodiversity destruction and nature loss, and establish a baseline upon which to set targets and develop action plans.

“With nature still seen by many organisations predominantly in relation to climate-related risks such as deforestation, disclosure can help them to ascertain the wider impact of nature-related risks,” he says.

However, Frank Hawkins, policy adviser for the International Union for Conservation of Nature, says: “The private sector wants the disclosure process to be focused on pathways, on steps that they’re taking in a particular direction, not on what the impacts of those steps are. But there’s no point having a disclosure framework if you can’t say what it achieved in terms of reducing impact,” he says.

Commentators believe governments could do a lot more to enable and encourage business action. BfN has outlined 20 specific policy asks for governments, which include banning conversion in specific key protected areas, policies to encourage the transition to regenerative farming models, the adoption of a global plastics treaty, reforming World Trade Organization rules to promote sustainable trade, and ratifying and implementing its agreement on fisheries subsidies made in 2022.

“Governments could do a lot more to encourage business action”

“We hope more governments will fully integrate the role of business in their National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs). For example, Japan has a nature-positive transition strategy for business and, as a result, there’s a large group of Japanese companies voluntarily using the TNFD,” Pelisson says.

For Poolen, governments have a role in derisking projects so that there is a credible pipeline to offer to financial institutions. “[They say] they want to invest but that there is a lack of pipeline of really meaningful and high-quality projects out there,” he says.

He cites the Dutch Fund for Climate and Development as a good example of how this can work. The fund invested €160m from 2019-2023 in a consortium of conservation organisations and financial institutions including the Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank, FMO. The NGOs offer technical assistance to entrepreneurs to develop projects that benefit nature, which are then offered to investors once ready.

“This is a really good example of using public funding to crowd in private sector capital. The original €160m is estimated to have leveraged around €500m in investment in projects,” he says.

Governments should also use their NBSAPs – which must be completed ahead of COP – to signal and guide the transitions of corporates and financial institutions, ideally sector by sector.

Maddox believes that the standardisation and harmonisation of frameworks, standards and regulations that already exist is key to boosting business action on nature, which has historically been held back by a lack of clarity in how to respond.

The CDP also wants governments to bring in stronger regulations to make businesses consider nature and climate together. Firms have tended to silo them, and prioritise climate, since regulation in that area is stronger, Maddox says. The CDP has this year introduced a new questionnaire that integrates climate and nature for the first time, so that business can report through the organisation while preparing to comply with regulatory and stakeholder demands.

However, Hawkins stresses that the buck stops with business. “Fundamentally, the future of biodiversity comes down to corporate-level decisions.”

Catherine Early is a freelance journalist

Expectations for COP16 

The focus at the summit will be on implementation of the plan agreed in Montreal. This includes:

• An agreement on how to share the benefits from the use of genetic resources from plants and animals for the benefit of the communities and ecosystems in which they are found. This will include thrashing out the details for creating a global fund paid into by companies that use such resources, such as in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. This could help pay for action to meet biodiversity targets.

• A review of progress in developing and implementing NBSAPs, and a look at how to monitor, report on and review progress, including specific indicators. Countries are expected to submit their NBSAPs ahead of COP16. As of mid-August, just 15 have done so, including the EU, Japan, Canada and China.

• Closing the gap in finance for meeting the global nature targets, estimated at US$700bn – for example, through the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund, which governments can donate to.