From Not Enough to Good Enough | Adjusting the Standard for Corporate Biodiversity Action
This October, the Seventeenth Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 17) will take place in Yerevan, Armenia, spotlighting the theme, Taking Action for Nature. COP 17 will focus on the first global review of action since the adoption of the Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) at COP 15 in 2022.
The vision of the KMGBF is a world living in harmony with nature where “by 2050, biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for all people.” The mission up to 2030 – a mere four years from now – is to “take urgent action to halt and reverse biodiversity loss to put nature on a path to recovery.”
It’s been a fascinating few years since COP 15 and the adoption of KMGBF when media attention in the biodiversity crisis reached its peak. It was not until COP 16, however, that the business sector’s attendance and engagement made headline-making numbers when thousands of private sector representatives descended on Cali, Colombia.
The driver for this enhanced engagement by industry was the adoption of Target 15 of the KMGBF (at COP 15) which set expectations for the private sector to “assess, disclose and reduce biodiversity related risks and negative impacts.” Since then, implementation of Target 15 has dominated private sector engagement. This shift has been supported by an ecosystem of newly created ‘nature’ practices within the large consulting firms, fresh interest from NGOs and others, who previously focused almost exclusively on climate and decarbonization and a surge of start-ups offering the ‘dashboard of your dreams’ for biodiversity reporting. Positive developments like the publication of a Nature Position Statement by the International Council on Minerals and Mining have elevated the KMGBF to more actors in the space.
What will the global review of corporate sector action find?
Has Target 15 changed conditions on-the-ground for nature? Has it driven companies to assess, disclose and reduce impacts? It may be too early to tell, but so far the signs are not good.
According to WWF only 23 of the 196 countries that adopted the KMGBF have updated and aligned their National Biodiversity Strategic Action Plans (NBSAPs), the primary tool for countries to translate the global targets into national action. An additional 18 countries have updated only the national targets section of the NBSAPs. Just 11% of the countries that adopted the KMGBF have aligned national strategies.
This is not a good signal.
Digging deeper with WWF’s NBSAP Tracker, the 23 NBSAPs were assessed against the NBSAP’s We Need checklist where private sector expectations are embedded in the Whole of Society element. Across these plans, this element averages 52% for the specificity of targets and actions. In effect, this means just 11% of countries are offering only moderately detailed guidance for business engagement.
This is not a good signal.
Outside of national efforts, advocacy, education and capacity building initiatives to advance Target 15 have focused on nature strategies and transition plans. However, the powerhouse campaign Business for Nature and its Now for Nature effort to record corporate nature strategies lists only 39 qualified nature strategies (as of this writing).
This is not a good signal.
The World Benchmarking Alliance recently closed its Collective Action Coalition (CIC) for Nature after only two years. The CIC launched in April 2024 to “push influential companies to assess and disclose their risks, dependencies and impacts on nature.” Its own Nature Benchmark shows an average score of 17.3/100 across 750 companies assessed for their nature engagement.
This is not a good signal.
The $942 billion funding gap persists with only $386 million pledged by 11 countries and the Province of Quebec. That’s 0.041% of the total needed.
While the World Economic Forum’s most recent Global Risks Report elevated the likelihood, and thus importance, of Biodiversity Loss and Ecosystem Collapse to the #2 position (after extreme weather) in the long-term 10-year horizon while the short-term, 2-year horizon places this risk at 26 on a list of 33 risks. The report concludes that in the immediate term, environmental concerns are being deprioritized against geopolitical, economic, technological, and societal risks.
These are not good signals. None are good signals.
A caveat must be added to acknowledge that the dearth of publicly reported actions does not always mean that no action is taking place. Tandem Global’s work with the private sector over decades has shown us that a significant number of our 100+ members take action for nature without necessarily reporting it.
Following COP 17, we won’t be leaving Yerevan with anything close to a passing grade.
Those of us working at the intersection of business and biodiversity left COP 15 with high hopes for the KMGBF and Target 15. The intervening years have seen the publication and disseminations of frameworks, standards, toolkits and guidance documents galore, but, as noted in the “not good signals” above, minimal progress on Target 15.
What’s missing is reports of progress on the other targets business has the capacity to support: from Target 1 – “Plan and Manage All Areas to Prevent Biodiversity Loss” to Target 19 – “Mobilize $200 Billion per Year for Biodiversity From all Sources, including $30 Billion Through International Finance,” and the many other targets of the 22 total.
As we head into COP 17, we can celebrate our successes in making nature material and providing the scaffolding to satisfy Target 15, but we must also acknowledge not enough corporate action on 15 or reporting on the other targets. We cannot continue the trajectory of the last 3 years if we are to meet the 2030 and 2050 goals for nature.
What can we do?
One option, given the rise of geopolitical instability as a likely risk to the global economy, is to reframe biodiversity loss as a national security risk like the UK just did in a recently published report, but that’s above many of our pay grades.
A better option might be to pivot from the technocratic approaches that have dominated recent discourse (and funding) and embrace the philosophy of ‘good enough’ – one that prioritizes progress, recognizes real world complexities, and celebrates workable solutions. Adopting this philosophy could open new avenues for movement, allow for a myriad of solutions to be adopted and direct resources where most needed for a nature-positive future.
What ‘Good enough’ looks like for private sector action on biodiversity:
- Understand that a corporation is a complex entity where change management can conflict with day-to-day realities, and adapt methodologies accordingly. One size does not fit all.
- Accept not every act of biodiversity uplift must be distilled into a spreadsheet, strategy or sustainability pillar, and create a suitable recognition framework to credit these acts.
- Allow nature to be framed outside of a purely financial paradigm like e.g. as an essential life support system, and accept values that don’t contribute directly to the bottom line.
- Recognize company stakeholder groups other than the finance sector, and value and accept storytelling as a credible communication channel that is not by default greenwashing.
- Acknowledge species/habitat like-for-like compensation is not always possible, and strengthen and align compensation funds to contribute the highest biodiversity returns.
- Adjust attitudes on voluntary contributions to recognize they are a critical part of the funding mix, and create more mechanisms for these contributions that are effective, efficient and just.
- Admit that the paucity of data is not the barrier to action, but the complexity of options and the seemingly infinite nature of requests, and design to simplify, streamline and maximize interoperability.
Of course, caveats exist; not all institutions and sectors will or can align with a ‘good enough’ approach but, if a critical mass were to adopt a ‘good enough’ mindset and foreground action as the key to uplift, we could be further along the road towards nature-positive outcomes.
