Why should business care about nature?
The conversation around climate change in business has shifted. Nature and global warming can no longer be treated in isolation. The writing is on the wall: it’s time to get nature positive.
We are currently experiencing a perfect storm of crises: energy, global food shortages, the cost of living. While these are compounded by conflict in Europe, they are undeniably linked to the effects of climate change. Extreme weather is causing harvest failures around the world while our natural systems – the best tools for fighting climate change – are being degraded daily.
When we rely on the natural systems for at least half our economic output, businesses are realising they can’t just focus on the transition to net zero, without putting how they treat nature firmly in the picture
It’s why you’ll hear the phrase “nature positive” far more often. Being nature positive means enhancing the resilience of our planet and societies to halt and reverse nature loss. It’s about more than just damage limitation, but about sustainable economic activity that not only minimises environmental impact but enhances ecosystems.
It’s why you’ll see firms like Northumbrian Water work with environmental partners like the Wildlife Trusts, Land Trust and National Trust to enhance the biodiversity of their sites. Or firms like Estee Lauder Companies participating in a seed funding initiative looking for scalable projects across the UK National Parks, which will create new income streams for farmers and landowners.
According to the IPCC how we farm, use land, manage forests, and how we use the sea are vital factors in solving the climate crisis. Yet farming, overfishing, mining, and deforestation have now reached such a scale that they are reducing the resilience of the biosphere.
“We are past the time where we can only focus on prevention,” said Dr Thomas Hale of the University of Oxford at the CBI’s Achieving Net Zero conference.
It’s a race to resilience, not just a race to net zero.
How to put a price on nature?
More firms need to recognise and quantify the benefits that nature brings. Land use is responsible for 25% of global emissions. One third of the gap that we need to close to get to 1.5 degrees comes through nature and protecting and restoring critical ecosystems.
David Craig, Co-chair of the Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TFND) sees a green growth opportunity in nature positive investment. A fundamental part of that opportunity is recognising the unbreakable link between climate change and our relationship with the natural world. “To be net zero you have to be nature positive. In fact, if you are to be net zero you can ONLY be nature positive,” he said.
The TFND has a taskforce made up of 400 members from financial services, corporates and governments with G7 and G20 support for creating a risk framework. That framework will help investors to understand where natural risk is happening, how to manage it and how to report on it, which will unlock a significant amount of investment.
But we still need to grow food.
Global warming vs global feeding
“The energy situation is flashing red – I'm amazed that the food situation isn't also flashing red. We've got to deal with them together,” says Minette Batters, President of the National Farmers Union (NFU) who pointed out that nature is at the heart of a healthy farm landscape.
The NFU is looking at water quality and biodiversity and working to establish the governance principles of how to integrate them into modern farming.
David Craig describes the need for a “Teslafication” of food production and pointed to new technologies such as vertical farming – there are already several initiatives around the country and more could allow us to create alternative sources for food that we normally fly in from abroad, right here, 365 days a year.
There is a real desire to change things at a farm level believes Minette Batters, who says we need a food, energy, and nature strategy that is fundamentally linked. “We have to feed this world, and we have to deal with climate change,” she added. “Luckily enough, by feeding the world more sustainably we can deal with climate change. Nature has to be the positive outcome of getting those two right.”
