Loading...
Including avoidance, minimisation, and offsetting (or compensation) of impacts on biodiversity; genetic diversity, species diversity, and ecosystems diversity; native species composition; invasive species; threatened and endangered species; protected species; management of ecosystems and the services they provide; and culturally and ecologically significant species and landforms.
Share this Subissue on:LinkedIn
The wellbeing of society and business is dependent on nature. Anchored in research, this guide aims to support your company as it begins or revisits a nature and biodiversity strategy. It helps build a foundational understanding of the issue and provides clarity on the work ahead.
This global review on the economics of biodiversity calls for changes in how we think, act, and measure economic success in order to protect and enhance our prosperity and the natural world. The review thoroughly explains the foundation of the biodiversity crisis, and includes key recommendations for reversing the human-caused decline in biodiversity, such as expanding and improvement of protected areas; increased investment into nature-based solutions; the creation or improvement of policies to eliminate damaging consumption of natural assets; the incorporation of natural capital accounting; and proper valuation of ecosystem services into all national accounting systems. This comprehensive deep-dive is a key reference point for sustainability professionals that want to account for nature in decision-making.
The WWF's Living Planet Index (LPI) is a measure of the state of the world's biological diversity based on population trends within the animal kingdom. Adopted by the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), this resource provides data a variety of sources for thousands of species. Whether you are evaluating current or future potential strategic risks from biodiversity decline, or simply seeking to build your understanding of the state of biodiversity, this resource is a good starting point to build your knowledge of systemic pressures and threats to biodiversity, socioecological trends, and other insights on how "conservation intervention" can promote species recovery.
WWF also publishes a biennial Living Planet Report, which provides a comprehensive assessment of the health of the planet. The report measures the average change in population sizes of more than 5,000 vertebrate species, and the latest updates suggests a decline of 73% between 1970 and 2020. It also features comprehensive information on measuring nature's decline; tipping points; global goals and progress; and sustainable solutions, such as those related to nature conservation, green finance, and changes to our food and energy systems.
This article written by the Network for Business Sustainability explains the three levels of biodiversity (genetic, species, and ecosystems) in simple terms, and illustrates the importance of biodiversity with a coral reef ecosystem case study. This explainer will be most useful to business leaders and to anyone interested in clarifying basic nature concepts.
Joining the Water Risk Filter in WWF's Risk Filter Suite, the Biodiversity Risk Filter was created to help you understand, explore, assess, and respond to biodiversity risks across your operations, value chains, and investments. This free tool uses 50 annually-updated data layers that collectively provide a global, holistic picture of biodiversity-related risk. This includes information on species and ecosystems, protected areas, and the most important pressures on biodiversity such as deforestation, habitat destruction, pollution, and land use change.
This report from WWF can help you to identify, assess, and address biodiversity risks and opportunities that come from conserving, using, and restoring biodiversity in a sustainable way. It highlights the impact that industries such as agriculture, extractives, land development, and energy production have on biodiversity, as well as their dependencies on robust and resilient biodiversity and ecosystems. The guide also provides a biodiversity stewardship approach to help you get started.
Business for Nature is a global coalition that brings together businesses and conservation organisations to advance corporate actions and government policies that reverse nature loss. They have outlined four high-level business actions that your business can take to signal that it is making meaningful contributions to creating a nature-positive world. They also provide case studies; resources to support nature-related advocacy and communications; and summaries of new and relevant frameworks, conventions, agreements, and more. Business for Nature is a good starting point for leaders and sustainability professionals who want to better acquaint themselves with nature-related policy trends, corporate actions, and talking points.
This resource can help you to better understand the scope and scale of actions that corporations must take to protect, manage, and restore nature, thereby preserving Earth as a "safe operating space for humanity." The report outlines the case for a nature-positive approach to business; outlines the actions required to live within the planetary boundaries, and the outcomes it would achieve; and identifies key opportunities that specific industries must seize to reduce their impacts on nature. It also provides a four-step roadmap for action, including credible investments, initiatives, and innovations that companies can pursue to achieve nature-positive commitments.
This article is a good primer on the pace and severity of biodiversity decline and the impacts this decline is having on our world. The article explains the concept of a global threshold for biodiversity loss; the concept and importance of genetic diversity; the realities of regime shifts; and the importance of radical action to preserve the remaining integrity of our biosphere.
This resource from Pollination - in collaboration with Chapter Zero and Korn Ferry - provides a good summary of key nature topics and practical guidance that can help you to support environmental resilience. Created for non-executive directors and board members, this guide explains what future-facing governance and leadership look like in the context of nature-related risks and opportunities; nature fundamentals for businesses; directors' duties and nature risk; understanding nature-related opportunities; and the steps directors should be taking now.
There is growing pressure on companies to publicly acknowledge the unprecedented nature loss we face, and what they plan to do to address it. To help them do so, we reviewed over 1,000 statements on nature loss, biodiversity, and ecosystem stewardship from a wide range of geographies and industries, and identified examples of how companies are explaining the issue of nature loss, linking the issue of nature loss to their strategy, and clarifying their commitments to protect and restore nature. We hope this guide is helpful to you in articulating your own credible position statement on protecting and restoring nature.
Building on the momentum of the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN) is a collaboration of 45+ global non-profits and mission-driven organizations working together to develop guidance to set science-based targets for all of Earth’s systems. Science Based Targets has created a five-step target-setting framework that helps you to assess; interpret and prioritise; measure, set, and disclose; act upon; and track your science-based goals. They have also created sector-specific guidance and target monitoring for companies and financial institutions.
At present, Science Based Targets helps companies to develop their goals based on the latest science: SBTi specifically focuses on GHG emission reduction goals, and SBTN specifically focuses on nature positive goals, with target-setting guidance for land, biodiversity, and freshwater. Their respective websites provide comprehensive resources, cases, and support for taking credible action.
These practical guidelines from the IUCN can help business of all types develop strategic plans to manage their biodiversity impacts. It uses a four stage approach, including understanding your companies impacts; developing your strategy and goals; identifying a set of meaningful biodiversity indicators; and creating a plan to monitor performance. This is a good resource for sustainability teams, managers, and other professionals whose responsibilities include strategic planning and biodiversity-related reporting.
The global biodiversity framework (GBF) that is being developed under the Convention on Biological Diversity intends to ensure that by 2050 humanity is 'living in harmony with nature'. However, the authors of this paper argue that the draft goals and targets - as they are currently articulated - do not specify explicit, measurable goals that can credibly achieve this outcome. This paper makes the case for distinct outcome goals for species, ecosystems, and genetic diversity, and it outlines seven general principles to underpin smart and effective net outcome goal-setting. These principles can help you to better understand the benefits and shortcomings of broad "net outcome" goals (such as "no net loss") and can support your process for creating and implementing credible biodiversity goals.
A growing number of companies have expressed the need for clear, standardised 'healthy ecosystem' metrics to demonstrate their progress towards reducing their impact on nature. To help business leaders and sustainability change agents take action on ecosystem decline, the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Learning has developed a framework that provides a credible, science-based starting point for measuring ecosystem impacts from a contextual perspective. The metric provided is based on the impact of a company upon the quality and quantity of biodiversity, soil, and water, with clear information on how the metric was conceived and how it could be used.
This guide from the Cross Sector Biodiversity Initiative and The Biodiversity Consultancy clearly defines the four steps of the mitigation hierarchy (avoid, minimize, restore and offset) and their application with regard to managing biodiversity throughout the life cycle of an extractive project. The guide offers practical measures for predicting and verifying biodiversity conservation outcomes over time, and provides insights into recording and comparing mitigation-related costs. If you are seeking to learn about the mitigation hierarchy and to understand your options for mitigating impacts from a contextual perspective, this guide is an excellent starting point.
This report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Natural Capital Finance Alliance (NCFA) was created to highlight the need for banks, insurers, and investors to set strong biodiversity targets. This resource can help you to understand why nature is important to financial institutions; which sectors have the greatest impact and dependence on biodiversity; and how to use this knowledge to inform biodiversity target-setting.
The CDP is a not-for-profit charity that runs the global disclosure system for investors, companies, cities, states, and regions to manage their environmental impacts. In addition to their work on carbon and climate change, they have created a range of resources to help your company take action on deforestation. Their Global Forests Report is a good resource for helping change agents understand the scale, scope, and rigour of actions required to tackle deforestation so that they can better summarise and translate these findings for executives and boards. Building off previous CDP and Accountability Framework Initiative (AFi) analysis, this report highlights areas of progress and gaps in performance and provides insights that can help your company learn from the progress of industry peers. Each section of the report summarizes key elements of the Accountability Framework’s Core Principles and guidance followed by corresponding analysis of company performance using CDP data.
The objective of this report from the IUCN is to learn from the experiences of the extractive and infrastructural sectors and to propose an organizing framework for applying No Net Loss (NNL) & Net Positive Impact (NPI) approaches in other business sectors. Although written with the agriculture and forestry sectors in mind, this report will help you to understand the mitigation heirarchy and the ambiguity around NNL and NPI definitions and impact goals. The document also provides a framework for applying a Net Positive Impact approach, with step-by-step scenario schematics (including visuals) that will help you to better understand the applicability of the mitigation hierarchy to your organization's work.
The Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool (IBAT) is an alliance between BirdLife International, UNEP's World Conservation Monitoring Centre, IUCN, and Conservation International, and is a key authority for global biodiversity information. IBAT can improve your decision-making and access to markets by growing your understanding of local, national, and regional biodiversity risks and opportunities. The tool provides comprehensive risk reports with data from the World Database on Protected Areas, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, and the World Database of Key Biodiversity Areas; combined, this information provides a comprehensive risk 'map' that can help you to align with international best practices.
The TNFD and IBAT Alliance have collaborated to create an integrated version of the Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool's biodiversity map on the TNFD website. This interactive map can help you to access critical biodiversity information and can be used to quickly screen for areas of biodiversity importance using the World Database of Protected Area, the World Database on Key Biodiversity Areas, and the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. These datasets are recommended by the TNFD for assessing biodiversity importance as part of the TNFD's LEAP approach.
Nature is disappearing, harming people and business. In this blog, we explain what you need to know about nature loss, the TNFD, and taking credible action to protect and restore nature.
The Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) outlines 23 targets to achieve by 2030. To date, corporate action has been limited to target 15. This white paper from the Wildlife Habitat Council can help you understand how corporations can support many other GBF targets beyond target 15. To this end, it illustrates a number of on-the-ground corporate conservation actions. These include managing land to reduce biodiversity loss; restoring and conserving ecosystems; protecting species of concern; responsibly managing wildlife populations; controlling invasive species; and developing urban green spaces. For each action, it provides an explanation, identifies which targets it supports, and provides an example of a business that has applied the action. The paper concludes with a call to action for corporate landowners to ensure their nature-positive actions align with the targets of the GBF. This resource may be relevant to many functions, including sustainability, community relations, operations, and finance teams.
Co-created with 100+ leading companies, this resource from WBCSD can help you to start - or accelerate - your journey toward nature positive. It provides a four-step process to help you learn the foundations of nature as a business imperative, including drivers of nature loss, key risks and opportunities, and more; build a clear understanding of how your sector interacts with nature by exploring the most material dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities across your operations and supply chain; identify and select the actions that will have the greatest impact in halting and reversing nature loss within your company’s operations and supply chain; and navigate and select the most relevant and feasible metrics to measure and disclose progress on your chosen actions.
This brief from CISL explains biodiversity loss and land degradation, why they matter, the financial implications of such decline, and methods for quantification. This brief may be a helpful primer for executives and board members who want to better understand how to prioritise these issues and to determine the cost of inaction.
The IFC has developed this guide to help you to better understand project eligibility criteria for biodiversity finance, as well as some of the more common project types. The guide builds on the Green Bond Principles and the Green Loan Principles and highlights different types of investment projects, activities, and components that help protect, maintain, or enhance biodiversity and ecosystem services, as well as promote the sustainable management of natural resources. This is a good resource for identifying opportunities to address the key drivers of biodiversity loss in your production practices; to integrate nature-based solutions into their operations; and to develop nature conservation activities.
Developed to address gaps within the financial sector, this standard by the Partnership for Biodiversity Accounting Financials (PBAF) can help you to understand the biodiversity-related information lenders and investors may expect you to disclose. It includes two assessments: the first provides guidance on assessing the biodiversity impacts of loans and investments, and the second outlines how to assess a financial institution’s dependencies on ecosystem services. The standard will be most useful to sustainability, communication, and finance professionals.
This landmark report by the Taskforce on Nature Markets can help you understand how nature-conserving behaviour can be incentivised through global markets. The report covers the rise of nature markets, their dangers, and their potential. It also makes 7 major recommendations to harness their power to support the transition to a post-carbon economy. The economic shift this report urgently calls for makes it particularly relevant to decision-makers, especially heads of finance and supply chains.
This report from WBCSD can help you understand how banks and investors can avoid financing deforestation. The report provides an overview of three key frameworks for assessing and disclosing deforestation risk exposure in your investment and lending portfolios, and reviews the assessment and data collection tools you can use to support this work. It also highlights tools for aligning with important global frameworks for nature, such as the Taskforce for Nature-Related Financial Disclosure (TNFD) and the Global Biodiversity Framework. This report will be most useful to sustainability practitioners working in the financial sector who want to quickly identify resources to support deforestation-free finance.
The mitigation hierarchy holds that avoiding, minimizing, rectifying, and reducing impacts to the natural environment are all preferable to offsetting, but there are situations where biodiversity offsets are a necessity. This guide from the Convention on Biological Diversity will help you understand when to consider using offsets, and explains the core principles and limits of offsetting.
Insetting refers to a company offsetting its emissions through projects that avoid, reduce, or sequester carbon within its own value chain. It is an opportunity for businesses to link emissions and carbon sequestration to their sourcing landscapes. This guide from the International Platform for Insetting shares insights and provides recommendations that will help you to transform your supply chain for a resilient, regenerative, net zero carbon future that values and protects nature. The guide was created specifically for insetting practitioners and stakeholders that want to learn more about the concept, and it highlights lessons and opportunities for realising the full potential of insetting.
This working paper from The Biodiversity Consultancy can help you understand what makes a high integrity biodiversity credit. The paper outlines the potential for voluntary biodiversity credits to support a nature-positive future, explains how integrity is defined, and explains the risks to credit integrity. It also proposes twelve principles for credible biodiversity credits and a flexible measurement framework. This is a valuable resource for those making decisions related to investing in biodiversity through credit purchase, or the development of biodiversity insetting projects across the value chain.
This paper from Pollination and the Taskforce on Nature Markets can help you understand what policies are needed for voluntary biodiversity credits markets to reach their potential. The paper explores the role of law, regulations, and policy; the different market types; lessons learned from biodiversity offset schemes; emerging biodiversity credit markets; and policy tools for scaling biodiversity credit markets. The implications of the recommended policy changes will be most relevant to sustainability and enterprise risk teams.
This paper from the Taskforce on Nature Markets can help you understand the emerging perspective that nature has fundamental rights and human beings have the legal authority and responsibility to enforce these rights on nature's behalf. It traces how this trend is being expressed in environmental law and the implications for nature-linked markets, including within nature credits and soft commodity markets. This paper points to a paradigm shift that will be most relevant to sustainability and legal practitioners.
This paper from NatureFinance, Carbone 4, and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) can help you understand the biodiversity credit markets' key challenges and solutions. The first section covers how five key challenges can be addressed to ensure high-integrity supply, scaled demand, and equitable distribution of benefits. The second section offers a roadmap to scale up these solutions and financial flows into biodiversity markets. The guidance will be most useful to sustainability and finance departments interested in recent trends and perspectives on biodiversity credits.
The Biodiversity Credit Alliance (BCA) was created to bring clarity to the development of a credible and scalable voluntary biodiversity credit market. This paper from the BCA can help you understand the essential role of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) in biodiversity projects and the biodiversity credit market. It provides an overview of the emerging biodiversity credit market; explains the rights of Indigenous Peoples and how credit markets benefit from involving IPLCs; and puts forth an initial list of ideas for how credit buyers and policymakers can ensure IPLCs' rights and benefits are respected. This guide will be most useful to sustainability practitioners seeking to purchase high-quality biodiversity credits.
This set of principles developed by Finance Earth and others can help you develop and invest in credible nature-based solution (NbS) projects. It outlines seven voluntary principles for developers of NbS projects: 1) science-based nature recovery; 2) environmental & social safeguarding; 3) additionality; 4) permanence & financial prudence; 5) seek co-benefits; 6) verifiability; and 7) transparency. For investors, it outlines two principles: 1) buyer screening criteria, and 2) commitment to best practices. The clear set of principles provided will be especially useful to sustainability and finance teams.
Although these principles were made with UK-based companies in mind, the lessons are relevant beyond that geographic context.
Natural climate solutions have been recognised as key levers in mitigating the negative impacts of climate change, with ~12% of global impacts from GHG emissions coming from land use and land-use changes (LULUC). To support you in calculating, accounting for, and reporting on LULUC-generated GHG emissions, the Accounting for Natural Climate Solutions Guidance from Quantis delivers a robust methodology to embed land-related emissions in corporate and product footprints, which can be used for setting science-based climate targets. Additionally, the supporting Annex document provides detailed information on the scope of the proposed methodology, including technical instructions, context, debated challenges, and limitations, as well as references.
This project by the Capitals Coalition can help you standardise natural capital accounting practices. The project has produced a series of guides with the aim of developing a generally accepted suite of methods, indicators, and criteria for biodiversity measurement and valuation tools and approaches for businesses and financial institutions. These resources include a business primer on assessing the overall quality of an ecosystem; guidance for measuring and valuing biodiversity at the site level and across supply chains; and recommendations for a standard on corporate biodiversity measurement and valuation. These guides will be most useful to sustainability practitioners and finance teams interested in natural and multi-capital accounting.
This new biennial report from UNEP, ILO, and IUCN anticipates that the scaling up of funding for nature-based solutions (NbS) will create significant new employment globally. It aims to initiate systemic engagement around understanding the socioeconomic impacts of NbS-related work. The report provides context on the estimated scale of job creation and how Just Transition strategies can be integrated to ensure decent work. Sustainability and supply chain management teams may find it particularly useful as expectations grow for the private sector to play a much greater role in funding NbS through supply chains and investments.
This white paper from the World Economic Forum can help you to better understand the different use cases for biodiversity credits. The first section outlines five use cases, such as enhancing carbon credits or supporting ecosystem services that your business relies on. The second section covers how credit purchasers can mitigate the risks associated with using biodiversity credits. The third and final section explains how to ensure high-integrity credits are used in each of the five use cases. This guidance will be most useful to sustainability and finance professionals involved in purchasing credits.
This report from UNEP, Global Canopy, and the Economics of Land Degradation Initiative (ELD) can help you to understand how and why finance for restoring nature needs to radically increase in the near future. This resource will be especially beneficial for sustainability and finance teams.
This insight report from the World Economic Forum can help you to better seize emerging nature-related opportunities and avoid related risks. The report urges financial institutions to proactively assess company efforts to align their strategies with nature-positive goals. Towards achieving this, the report provides eleven indicators that institutions can integrate into their portfolio assessments to mainstream nature in financial decision-making, including materiel nature impacts and dependencies, and risks and opportunities; nature metrics; nature ambition; nature targets; strategy and actions; planned spend; supplier engagement plan; and more.
Although written with financial institutions in mind, these indicators may be of benefit for other firms when assessing the nature-related progress of value chain partners and portfolio companies.
This resource from the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) warns that over 37,000 alien species have been introduced by human activities to regions and biomes around the world, with significant impacts on biodiversity, ecosystems, communities, and economies. It assesses the array of invasive alien species and their effects; analyses the extent of threats towards specific categories of ecosystem services and biodiversity; highlights trends and identifies key drivers of the introduction and spread of invasive species; and more.
Although this was created with policymakers in mind, this is a good resource for helping sustainability change agents to learn the extent of invasive alien species impacts on their industry and beyond.
This report from Flora & Fauna and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) can help you to understand the value of coordinated action on addressing invasive alien species (IAS), as well as the need to scale up such action. The report brings together key insights from engagement with businesses to create a clear picture of how companies are encountering IAS, the actions they are taking, and what support is needed to accelerate progress. This resource will be especially beneficial to agents of change and risk professionals.
This brief from the Biodiversity Consultancy can help you to understand what invasive species are, how an invasion happens, and how to manage invasive species. It also includes best practices for industry, in alignment with International Finance Corporation lending policies.
This searchable database is a good source of expert information on alien and invasive species that are negatively impacting biodiversity. Managed by the Invasive Species Specialist Group (ISSG) of the IUCB Species Survival Commission, the database covers all taxonomic groups from micro-organisms to flora and fauna.
This white paper details the key methods corporations can use to manage invasive species, enhance native habitats, and support surrounding communities. The paper uses case studies to highlight a six step approach that includes prevention, monitoring, control, restoration, education, and collaboration. This paper is a good introduction for executives and change agents to the key components of invasive species control.
This resource from IUCN is a helpful starting point for organizations drafting their first invasive species management plan. The note also provides a list of helpful reference points for specific pest management guidelines.
This comprehensive guideline will specifically benefit businesses with operations and projects on island territories. The guideline includes a 3-part checklist on the foundations, information and prioritisation, and management action, as well a detailed how-to, which includes advice for engaging with the community, writing an invasive species strategy and action plan, and translating the plan into action.
Including management of ecosystems and their services; culturally significant species and landforms; direct goods and services that provide value to communities; cumulative and secondary impacts from development.
This brief from the International Institute for Sustainability Development (IISD) is a good primer on the key natural resource management topics. It explains key trends in natural resource use; key actions required to support resilient systems; and the pressing need for inclusive governance and transformative change.
Developed by WBCSD, this toolkit is directed at businesses who need help with measuring specific aspects of natural capital, such as waste or water, and who want to understand which natural capital measurement tools are available and how they differ. This online resource consolidates all of the tools, methodologies, and approaches of the Natural Capital Protocol, and provides a standardised, international framework for conducting natural capital assessments. This is a helpful resource for learning which tools to use for measuring and evaluating, and when.
This set of reports from the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) can help you to reconsider your organisation's relationship with nature. They explore how to implement nature-based solutions (NbS) in four sectors: water; food and beverage; built environment and linear infrastructure; and finance. Each sector-specific report outlines the challenges and actions NbS projects require and why NbS is necessary and beneficial. This guidance will be most useful to sustainability practitioners, project developers, finance professionals, and others seeking to improve operational resilience and be good stewards of the natural resources on which their business relies.
Natural climate solutions have been recognised as key levers in mitigating the negative impacts of climate change, with ~12% of global impacts from GHG emissions coming from land use and land-use changes (LULUC). To support you in calculating, accounting for, and reporting on LULUC-generated GHG emissions, the Accounting for Natural Climate Solutions Guidance from Quantis delivers a robust methodology to embed land-related emissions in corporate and product footprints, which can be used for setting science-based climate targets. Additionally, the supporting Annex document provides detailed information on the scope of the proposed methodology, including technical instructions, context, debated challenges, and limitations, as well as references.
This standard from IUCN is can help you to better understand the minimum requirements for avoiding risks to biodiversity. Although the standard is dated, its recommendations remain a good starting point on the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources.
This report, the first in the World Economic Forum's 'New Nature Economy' report series, will help you to better understand the dependency and impact of business on nature. The report uses a simple three-stage breakdown: 1) acknowledging and explaining the crisis of biodiversity decline, 2) identifying material risks, and 3) managing material risks. This report explores the scale and urgency of the biodiversity decline emergency and the drivers of nature loss, and provides a helpful fit-for-purpose framework for managing nature-based risks.
This tool can help you to evaluate the impact of your activities and investments on biodiversity. It establishes a biodiversity footprint measure expressed in an aggregated metric that represents ecosystem integrity, and uses the concept of Scope (similar to climate emission assessments) to break down impacts from across the value chain. This reference tool will be especially beneficial to sustainability professionals that want to improve the credibility of their nature-related commitments enhance their company's efforts to protect and restore biodiversity.
This brief from CISL explains biodiversity loss and land degradation, why they matter, the financial implications of such decline, and methods for quantification. This brief may be a helpful primer for executives and board members who want to better understand how to prioritise these issues and to determine the cost of inaction.
Billions of people benefit daily from the use of wild species for food, energy, materials, medicine, recreation, inspiration, and more. 50,000 wild species meet the needs of billions of people worldwide, and more than 10,000 wild species are directly harvested for food. This report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) can help you to understand how the global biodiversity crisis threatens the contributions of these species to humanity, and provides insights, analysis, and tools to establish more sustainable use of wild species of plants, animals, fungi, and algae around the world.
This report identifies five broad categories of ‘practices’ in the use of wild species: fishing; gathering; logging; terrestrial animal harvesting (including hunting); and non-extractive practices, such as observing. For each practice, it then examines specific ‘uses’ for these materials; identifies trends and drivers of change; explores policies, practices, and tools to effect positive change; and examines a range of possible future scenarios for the use of wild species.
This report from Entreprises pour l’Environnement can help you to better understand tangible actions that your business can take to support biodiversity. It explains how businesses can avoid or reduce pressure on biodiversity, including through land use, pollution, and invasive species management; describes the different ways that businesses can enable and support biodiverse areas through conservation, rewilding, and renaturing artificialised areas; and explains how to factor nature into business decisions. Each chapter includes a series of brief case studies demonstrating biodiversity action implementation. The insights provided are wide-ranging and will be useful to any business function involved in biodiversity-related projects.
GRI’s revised biodiversity reporting standard can help you understand and disclose your most significant biodiversity impacts. It covers supply chain impacts, location-specific reporting, disclosures on direct drivers of biodiversity loss, as well as social impacts related to biodiversity loss. This resource will be most useful to sustainability professionals.
Businesses face real and potentially significant material risk from biodiversity loss. This report from the Commonwealth Climate and Law Institute (CCLI) can help directors, investors, accountants, procurement professionals, and legal professionals to assess biodiversity dependencies and impacts and to better embed these factors into strategy and disclosure processes. The report explains how directors may face the risk of liability for a failure to consider biodiversity risks in governance and disclosure, and provides a jurisdictional spotlight on duties of care. The guide also provides key questions board directors should ask to ensure they are meeting their duties to the company.
This paper from the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) can help you better understand the case for integrating nature-related risks into financial decisions. It explains why integration is needed, how it can be done, and outlines four use cases for assessing specific nature-related financial risks. These cases demonstrate the opportunities to mitigate financial risks. The paper also highlights six ways to accelerate the integration of nature into financial decision-making. This resource will be most useful to senior management and sustainability practitioners seeking to engage senior managers.
This comprehensive guide from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations presents the first global assessment of biodiversity for food and agriculture worldwide. The report draws on information from 91 country reports to provide a description of the roles and importance of biodiversity for food and agriculture, the drivers of change affecting it, and its current status and trends. It describes the state of efforts to promote the sustainable use and conservation of biodiversity for food and agriculture, including through the development of supporting policies, legal frameworks, institutions and capacities. It also explains the needs and challenges of future management of biodiversity for food and agriculture. This resource is an excellent starting point for change agents to build their awareness and understanding of the vital importance of biodiversity to global food systems.
This paper outlines six priority steps for restoring biodiversity in rivers, lakes, and wetlands. These steps address improving environmental flows; improving water quality; protecting and restoring critical habitats; improving fisheries management; managing invasive species; and restoring waterway connectivity. The practical steps and examples described may be useful to a range of departments that can play a role in restoring ecosystems, including strategic planning, procurement, and sustainability.
This report produced by the Convention on Biological Diversity can help you understand how biodiversity conservation efforts are enhanced when gender issues are addressed. Based on a review of best practices from diverse projects around the world, it provides a review of best practices, summaries of action areas, and implementation mechanisms. The report also features a collection of case studies and best practice snapshots. These insights will be most useful to sustainability and procurement practitioners.
This comprehensive guide from the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) can help you to better protect and restore nature in extractive contexts. It provides a seven-step process for designing and operationalising strategies to achieve and maintain no net loss of biodiversity at mining operations and paves the way for firms to target biodiversity net gain. The process steps include establishing areas of analysis; establishing a biodiversity baseline; selecting site-level biodiversity metrics; applying appropriate mitigation measures and assessing their impacts on biodiversity; assessing and offsetting residual impacts on biodiversity; monitoring and applying adaptive management; and transparently disclosing progress. The guide includes technical guidance for each step, as well as real-world examples of effective nature conservation and restoration strategies and projects.
Although written with the mining and metals sector in mind, many of the processes and other content will be applicable to other sectors.
This comprehensive guide from the TNFD breaks down the process of aligning transition planning with the goals and targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) and can help you to develop a coherent set of forward-looking nature-related strategies, actions, and accountability mechanisms that are built into your organisation’s overarching business strategy. It provides detailed information on nature in transition planning; how to incorporate nature into a transition plan; and how to disclose information about nature in a transition plan. The guide builds on best practices for climate transition plans, including the approach proposed by the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) and Transition Plan Taskforce (TPT), and will be especially beneficial to senior leaders and other professionals tasked with communicating how your organisation plans to respond and contribute to the transition implied by both the Paris Agreement and the GBF.
This short resource from WWF can help you to understand the societal benefits of restoring rivers and wetlands. It explains why healthy rivers and wetlands are important, as well as the benefits that restored freshwater ecosystems provide. It also lays out the freshwater challenge in UN conventions and commitments and explains how policy makers can accelerate river and wetland restoration.
This report from the World Resources Institute can help you to understand how AI can be used to better understand and protect nature. It outlines opportunities for AI to bring about unique breakthroughs for nature, such as using AI for environmental monitoring, biodiversity mapping, and land-use planning, while also identifying the social, ethical, and governance risks and challenges that accompany AI applications.