The author is a professor of responsible and sustainable business at Oregon State University
Over the past two decades, corporate sustainability has made meaningful strides. But the central focus on climate action has been too narrow.
Nature loss — from deforestation and biodiversity decline to soil and ecosystem degradation — poses profound risks to business operations, supply chains, and long-term value creation. While climate action can help, it cannot replace a dedicated strategy for protecting and restoring natural ecosystems.
Business leaders are beginning to take notice. A growing number are now incorporating nature into their sustainability agendas. Some are embedding biodiversity considerations into procurement and product design. Others are working to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains or investing in ecological restoration. Investors are rallying behind the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), which seeks to make nature-related risks visible to markets.
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Three interrelated developments help explain this shift. First, the economic foundations of nature are becoming harder to ignore. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) global assessment report and the UK Treasury-commissioned Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity have brought scientific rigour and clarity to the links between nature and the economy.
They are catalysing a wider recognition that healthy ecosystems regulate climate, purify water, pollinate crops, sequester carbon, and reduce disaster risk. Sectors as diverse as agriculture, food and beverage, apparel, real estate, tourism, and insurance rely heavily on these ecosystem services, even if their value is still often invisible on corporate balance sheets.
Second, public institutions are working to close the visibility gap. Governments and multilateral organisations are developing tools to make nature’s contributions legible to economic systems. Canada, New Zealand and the EU have launched natural capital accounting initiatives to track how ecosystems underpin national and regional wealth.
The UN Development Programme is advancing biodiversity finance, while IPBES is preparing a global assessment on business and biodiversity. The UN’s System of Environmental-Economic Accounting provides a standardised method for embedding nature into national balance sheets, helping markets and policymakers begin factoring ecological integrity into investment and policy decisions.
Third, market-based investment mechanisms are taking shape. In Australia, a biodiversity market now allows landholders to earn and trade biodiversity certificates. In England, biodiversity net gain (BNG) has been mandatory for most new developments, requiring a 10 per cent increase in nature value through on or off-site restoration — though the UK government last week announced it was reviewing the rule for smaller projects. While biodiversity credits are still nascent, pilot programmes in Costa Rica and Colombia are testing models that reward conservation efforts with tradeable credits.
HSBC and Pollination, an investment and advisory group, have launched a $1bn natural capital fund to invest in reforestation and land restoration across Latin America and Asia-Pacific. Mirova, a sustainable investing affiliate of Natixis Investment Managers, is mobilising a blended finance coalition to back its second-generation fund supporting regenerative agriculture, agroforestry, and sustainable forestry in the global south. US-based global environmental organisation The Nature Conservancy’s nature-linked bonds — where interest rates are tied to biodiversity or ecosystem performance — echo early-stage developments in the green and blue bond markets.
As a result, a growing number of companies are committing not just to halting biodiversity loss, but to actively improving biodiversity. Some are rethinking sourcing: Unilever, General Mills, and Grupo Bimbo are scaling regenerative agriculture, while VF Corporation, Allbirds, and Patagonia are incorporating bio-based materials into core product lines.
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Others are building tools to better account for ecological impacts. Kering’s Environmental Profit & Loss model and Holcim’s use of biodiversity risk assessment platforms such as Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool reflect a shift towards making nature legible financially.
A third group of corporates is investing directly in ecosystem restoration: Natura links forest conservation to local livelihoods in the Amazon rainforest; Brown-Forman (the maker of Jack Daniel’s whiskey) is working to restore the white oak population essential to its supply chain; and in the UK First Milk is turning dairy waste into biogas while sequestering carbon on farms.
This momentum is unfolding against a more turbulent political and cultural backdrop. In the US, the National Nature Assessment, a groundbreaking federal initiative to evaluate the state of nature across the country, was terminated by Donald Trump’s administration. In Europe, the EU’s Green Deal has faced mounting political pressure, particularly around its nature-focused pillars. The Nature Restoration Law, which mandates the recovery of degraded ecosystems, barely survived a legislative showdown, and the EU Deforestation Regulation has drawn opposition from several member states.
The corporate world is contending with a widening backlash to environmental, social and governance issues, which is increasingly framed as politically charged, prompting some to rebrand or quietly scale back. While many companies continue their sustainability work, nature-related strategies risk becoming collateral damage, particularly when they are perceived as compliance-driven or reputational rather than core to value creation.
Despite political and cultural upheaval, the shift from carbon-only to nature-centred sustainability is gaining traction. Tools such as Exploring Natural Capital Opportunities, Risks and Exposure, the Global Biodiversity Score, and TNFD-aligned assessments are helping companies identify where ecosystems underpin their operations. Natural capital accounting and biodiversity-inclusive disclosures are creating new ways to connect ecological impacts to business performance, and are strategic tools for resilience, innovation, and long-term competitiveness.
In the future, nature-centred business must be embedded into a broader economic shift — one that reorients industry around regeneration, not extraction. A bioeconomy built on ecological productivity, circular design, and inclusive stewardship offers a viable and scalable path forward. Restoring ecosystems, investing in soil health, or protecting forests and watersheds become core business strategies.
Companies that incorporate this shift won’t just stay ahead of regulation or sidestep ideological backlash. They will define the next chapter of corporate sustainability rooted in living systems, long-term value, and shared ecological prosperity.
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