Over the last few years, climate-related issues including the pursuit of net zero have risen to the top of the sustainability agenda in corporate boardrooms. While reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a critical priority for business, so too is the need to preserve natural systems and biodiversity. Increasingly, the climate and nature agendas are recognized as intertwined, even interdependent. And, as with climate change, 2030 presents key deadlines for ambitions like the determination of multiple countries to protect 30% of land by 2030. The success or failure of these will depend on the ESG strategies of the various companies among other reasons.

Biodiversity goals have been given greater urgency than ever before by the Dasgupta Review, an independent report on the economics of biodiversity. The study examines the planetary boundaries framework, a concept that offers a collection of nine biophysical processes necessary to Earth System functioning as well as boundaries (i.e., constraints) that define a safe operating zone for each one. Each border breach brings the world one step closer to global destabilisation and perhaps unparalleled operational danger for enterprises. Alarmingly, 2022 saw the fifth and sixth boundaries breached.

Organisations must evaluate their current impact on nature and biodiversity. Many of the current processes used in Environmental and Social Impact Assessments can be utilised to accomplish this (ESIA). ESIAs forecast the environmental and social consequences of a proposed future project. By conducting scenario planning exercises to examine physical risks, organisations may gain a better understanding of how potential climate change impacts will affect ecology and biodiversity. This will help them determine where their facilities, supply networks, and capital assets are exposed to challenges like sea-level rise, flooding, heat waves, drought, and storms, among others.

Nature-first business practices may conserve and maintain tremendous economic value. A nature-first approach to net zero protects enterprises against natural threats while also safeguarding the environment from overuse. Organisations may address net zero and nature by grounding their strategies in nature-first models and decarbonizing their operations through techniques that conserve, restore, and manage nature sustainably. This has the ability to lower a company’s environmental effect while also decreasing the company’s influence on the climate crisis, therefore enhancing the resilience of both the ecosystem and the organisation.

Nature-first solutions shift away from measures that only prevent environmental harm and toward those that have a positive impact. This might include conserving indigenous species and building new natural vegetation buffers around and through plantations and agricultural systems, or providing nature-based solutions surrounding facilities in place of overreliance on artificial fertilisers and pesticides (e.g., using vegetation to reduce flooding). Carbon offsetting also plays an important part in nature-first methods.