Navigating Nature: The ‘alphabet soup’ of biodiversity initiatives
Welcome to ‘Navigating Nature’, WBA’s new nature blog series!
Today in Part One, we write about the evolution of the “alphabet soup” of biodiversity initiatives. In Part Two, we’ll dive deeper into the most widely used frameworks and tools, exploring how they work together and the relationships between them. Stay tuned for more!
The evolution of biodiversity initiatives
Climate change and biodiversity loss are deeply interconnected crises that demand urgent, coordinated action. While climate change often takes centre stage in global discussions, biodiversity loss remains comparatively underacknowledged, though it is equally critical to ecosystems, economies, and human well-being. Addressing it is not only a moral imperative but also a business necessity.
To effectively address biodiversity loss, businesses require clear and actionable frameworks. But for some, the question isn’t whether we have frameworks, it’s whether we have too many. The abundance of initiatives and tools — ranging from TNFD and SBTN to ENCORE, IBAT, GRI, CSRD, ESRS, and GBF — has created an overwhelming “alphabet soup” that can leave companies perplexed, struggling to navigate overlapping goals and requirements.
Why do we have so many initiatives instead of one all-encompassing guide? How did this soup get so alphabet-heavy in the first place? To answer these questions, let’s journey through the evolution of global biodiversity initiatives.
Recognising the dual crises
Biodiversity underpins global economic systems, with over 50% of the world’s GDP — approximately $44 trillion — moderately or severely at risk due to nature loss. The Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity highlights this dependence, emphasizing the critical role of natural capital alongside produced and human capital in sustaining economies. Yet, between 1992 and 2014, while produced capital per person doubled, natural capital declined by 40%, revealing a growing imbalance that threatens economic and ecological stability, demanding urgent action to safeguard societal resilience.
Despite some progress, humanity’s annual resource consumption — equivalent to that produced by 1.6 Earths — is driving irreversible ecosystem collapse. The decline in ecosystem integrity not only undermines biodiversity but also exacerbates climate risks. A 2024 study of European Climate Risk Assessment identifies ecosystems as the policy cluster which needs most urgent action, emphasizing that non-climate risk drivers, such as biodiversity loss, significantly amplify vulnerabilities to climate hazards. Without urgent action, these interconnected crises will lead to cascading risks across food systems, health, and economic stability.
Progress in biodiversity awareness and action
Over the decades, humanity has made significant strides in understanding and tackling the complex challenges of biodiversity loss. What began as isolated conservation efforts has grown into integrated global frameworks that link biodiversity to our economic and social systems. Here I present the progress in biodiversity through two parallel timelines: one focused on awareness and knowledge building, and the other on practical actions and implementation.
It’s important to note that some milestones have a dual nature, fitting into both categories due to their conceptual significance and practical applications. This separation is intended to provide clarity and ease of understanding, rather than being a definitive distinction.
(See the complete interactive timeline here)
Building awareness and knowledge
This journey started with the 1964 establishment of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the first global effort to assess the conservation status of species. By categorizing species based on their extinction risk, it created a scientific foundation for conservation. Seven years later, the 1971 Ramsar Convention became the first treaty to protect ecosystems, focusing on wetlands. These early steps set the stage for both species-specific and ecosystem-specific conservation, later expanded to biodiversity as a whole.
The 1980s saw the growing realization that biodiversity isn’t just about protecting nature, instead, it’s deeply interconnected with sustainable development. The 1987 Brundtland Report brought up the concept of sustainable development, defining it as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”, formally linking environmental health, including biodiversity, to human prosperity.
By the 2000s, research had firmly established the critical role of biodiversity in supporting economy and human well-being. The 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) emphasized the concept of ecosystem services, breaking down the ways nature supports us — through provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural services. These insights provided a framework for understanding how ecosystems sustain life and their intrinsic and instrumental value. The 2010 report on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) made a powerful case for valuing biodiversity in economic terms, encouraging businesses and governments to bring biodiversity into their decisions. Advances in understanding humanity’s dependencies on ecosystems led to the 2017 IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, highlighting that protecting ecosystems is not just about preserving nature but also about safeguarding the very systems that sustain human life.
By the mid-2010s, the links between biodiversity, climate change, and sustainable development became increasingly apparent. The 2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly Goals 14 (Life Below Water) and 15 (Life on Land), underscored biodiversity’s vital role in ensuring sustainability. Around the same time, the 2015 Paris Agreement, while focused on climate change, highlighted the role of biodiversity in enhancing ecosystem resilience and supporting carbon sequestration.
Since the late 2010s, biodiversity loss had escalated into a global crisis. The 2019 IPBES Global Assessment Report issued a stark warning: One million species faced extinction, mainly due to human activity like habitat destruction and overexploitation. This ecological alarm was paralleled by growing economic arguments, with the 2022 Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity framing biodiversity loss as a systemic risk to global economies, pushing for its integration into financial systems. Those stark warnings highlighted the urgency of global and corporate efforts.
Driving action and implementation
Actions to conserve biodiversity have advanced in parallel with the growing understanding of biodiversity issues. The early treaties, such as the 1971 Ramsar Convention and the 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) marked early steps in practical global biodiversity protection, providing mechanisms to protect ecosystems and regulate international trade in endangered species. These ideas culminated in the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which went beyond conservation to emphasize sustainable use and equitable benefit-sharing. This agreement laid the foundation for integrating biodiversity into global development agendas.
Entering the 2000s, biodiversity target-setting has gone through significant evolution, driven by growing awareness of its importance for human well-being and global economies. The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) reinforced commitments made under CBD and set the goal of achieving a significant reduction in the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010, marking a shift from broad commitments to time-bound goals. This target paved the way for the 2010 Aichi Biodiversity Targets, which set specific and measurable goals, such as halving habitat loss and reducing pressures on ecosystems.
Although these targets represented a milestone in global conservation efforts, the 2020 Global Biodiversity Outlook 5 (GBO-5) revealed limited progress that most Aichi Targets remained unmet. Among the lessons learned, one critical issue stood out: the limited involvement of the private sector. The framework primarily focused on governments and conservation organizations, leaving businesses — a major driver of biodiversity loss — largely out of the equation. Building on these lessons, the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) at COP15 set ambitious targets, including the conservation of 30% of the planet’s land and sea by 2030. Notably, it explicitly recognized the role of businesses in biodiversity conservation.
In Target 15, for example, states commit to put measure in place to require large and transnational companies to assess and disclose their impacts and dependencies on nature. This marked a critical shift, transforming biodiversity from something seen as solely the responsibility of governments and conservation organizations to an issue that businesses must also address.
This shift is relatively recent, and the last decade saw the emergence of practical tools to support businesses in addressing biodiversity challenges. The 2016 Natural Capital Protocol provided a framework for companies to assess their impacts and dependencies on biodiversity. Building on this, the 2021 Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) developed guidelines for managing and disclosing nature-related risks, while the 2023 Science-Based Targets for Nature (SBTN) offered target-setting pathways for aligning corporate practices with global biodiversity goals.
Most recently, at COP16 in 2024, the Nature Positive Initiative introduced nine biodiversity indicators, aligning with GBF and provide businesses with metrics to measure and manage their biodiversity impacts.
Although these tools may seem like separate pieces of guidance, the organisations behind them collaborate closely to align their efforts, aiming to create a unified and actionable framework with clear and actionable steps. This collective effort aims to help businesses better understand their impact on nature and take meaningful actions, placing biodiversity at the heart of their decisions and transforming them from part of the problem into part of the solution.
The message is clear: We must act now. The groundwork is laid, but it’s now up to businesses to step up, prioritise their efforts, and transform the understanding into tangible action.