‘Nature positive’ will be as big as net zero

THE world has lost almost 70 per cent of its wildlife population since 1970. The Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), that was agreed in December 2022 at the United Nations’ Biodiversity Conference in Montreal (also referred to as COP15), could do for biodiversity and the natural world what the Paris Agreement did for climate in 2015, putting it firmly on the agenda for companies, policymakers, and investors.

The phrase on everyone’s lips is “nature positive”, the idea that the true economic value of nature should be accounted for and that the world should go beyond mere damage limitation. What has previously been lacking is a set of rules and standards that encourages “nature positive” capital allocation. The targets agreed at COP15 were a significant step in the right direction, towards the ambitious target to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. However, there is a lot more work to be done.

Biodiversity, which refers to the variety and abundance of life on earth, is an even tougher nut to crack than climate change. The assessment tools available are also less developed than in other areas of sustainability. For example, investors wanting to compare the climate impact of different projects or portfolios can use a now widely adopted metric called CO2-equivalent to assess emissions of different greenhouse gases using the same scale.