Welcome to the Eclipse podcast.

I'm your host, Toni McKee. Nature and biodiversity loss are moving up the global agenda.

At the COP 15 Biodiversity Conference in 2022, nearly 200 countries signed a historic agreement to halt biodiversity loss by 2030. This was a major step forward for nature, putting it on par with the energy transition in terms of focus global initiatives.

Today, the term ‘nature positive’ is everywhere, thanks in large part to the work of my guest, Marco Lambertini. Marco is convener of the Nature Positive Initiative and is former director general of WWF International.

He has been dedicating his whole life to raising awareness of the importance of nature and building a future where people and nature live in harmony. We're going to explore nature's move into the spotlight and how companies can build a business case for protecting nature and biodiversity.

Welcome, Marco.  

Thank you very much.

So tell us about Nature Positive Initiative. What’s the organisation trying to achieve?

Yeah so the Nature Positive Initiative brings together leading organisations from all sectors of society, environmental, business, finance, standard setting, indigenous knowledge, local governance, academia, to support the Hummington Trail Global Biodiversity Framework, what is also called the Biodiversity Plan, and its mission, to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.

The new global goal for nature, the new nature positive goal. This is the new direction that this agreement is described by almost one of the countries under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity as a grid on nature, given the world a direction on nature like Paris did for climate. So now we have a global goal for climate and a global goal for nature, hand in hand, delivering a sustainable future.

So the initiative is about providing guidance, highlighting guidance on how to deliver now this goal that we have agreed to deliver by the end of the decade. A goal that would bring more nature, not less, so stop the decline, help the reversal and bring nature back for the benefits of all life on earth, but particularly for the benefit of our own economy, our own social stability, health, so for humanity.

Yeah, it’s really needed right now an organisation like Nature Positive Initiative.

So how can companies get involved? What should they do?

Companies can get involved through the different business platforms, members of the initiative already in the governance of the initiative or also can join directly the Nature Positive Forum, which is basically a forum open to anyone who wants to have first-hand interaction with peers, with leaders in the space and share, learn and particularly develop together, align guidance to develop and achieve and deliver genuine nature positive outcomes.

Guidance that needs to be science-based for sure, credible, meaningful, but also at the same time accessible, practical for implementation and affordable in terms of cost, because we want everyone in society, including in the private sector, to contribute to the global goal of holding the universe in care.

 

Can you explain in your own words this trajectory that nature has seen over the past few years into the spotlight? Why was it lower on the agenda before and how did it pull into such sharp focus in recent years?

First of all, let me just start by saying that you think about the vast majority of our human history, we have been always embedded in nature.

Nature was there, abandoned, limitless, so effectively we were taking nature for granted. And that has changed particularly in the last few decades, actually, where a combination of an exponential demographic growth and incredible advances in technology has triggered what some scientists call the great acceleration of both consumption of basically all natural resources you can think of and destruction of the natural world, and so science in the last decades also has never been clearer about these impacts.

We know exactly what's happening, what's happened. We lost half of the forest, half of the coral reefs, 80 % of the wetlands, one million species threatened with extinction, two -thirds of the wildlife population declined in the last 30, 40 years.

So finally, we are beginning to understand, first of all, that the crisis is real.

Secondly, most importantly, the consequences that the loss of nature is having not just on the natural world per se, which of course we have a strong moral duty to coexist with, but for us, for ourselves. So, nature has become, nature loss has become an issue that has to do with our economy, our prosperity, our social cohesion, our health, our well -being, more in general is a justice issue because most vulnerable populations in the world today are suffering the most and in intergenerational issues because we are leaving our children, their children, terrible legacy.

All this has made nature suddenly become relevant, material, not just a moral duty, but something that affects our lives.

Interesting. It's taken 15 to 20 years or something for some people to admit that climate change was actually happening. And suddenly that seems to be happening more because it's more visible. You can actually see the impacts of that. Do you think that just anecdotally people can see biodiversity loss and nature disappearing? –

No, that's exactly one of the problems because as I mentioned earlier, I called it the silent crisis because you actually don't see the unfiltered climate, it's hot, it's wet, it's floods, it's wind, but it disappears silently and sometimes also in a non -visible way.

And so, definitely, has had an impact in making the crisis less perceived, less felt. But I think now we know so much and science has been so clear that actually, intellectually, even if you don't feel it directly so much, we're beginning to feel that this is a serious threat to our security.  

Right. So you mentioned some of the biggest threats already to nature, like the consumption of natural resources, advances in technology. Are these the biggest threats to nature as you see it, or is there another way to sort of look at that from your point of view? What are the biggest threats to nature?

Yeah, so the biggest threat is what we just talked about. I think the really biggest threat is not to realize the impact that nature loss is having on our lives. It's about taking nature for granted and think and embracing this delusional idea that we can continue to pay and use and exploit natural resources in the natural world, destructively, wastefully, unsustainably without consequences.

But from a scientific perspective, there are five categories of threats. The first or probably most important one today is the conversion of natural ecosystems, deforestation, the reclamation of wetlands, the damming of rivers, et cetera, et cetera. All that is driving the majority of nature loss. We have altered almost two -thirds of land surface and ocean through our activities already.

The second is the unsustainable use of exploitation of living resources, where it is forestry, where it is fishing, hunting. All this is utterly unsustainable, imagine that 90 % of the commercial fish stocks are either fully fished or overfished today. Then there is pollution, of course, in so many different ways. Then there is the less spoken about  issue of invasive species, species that, through our trade, our commerce, our shipping, we are moving around the world and so they end up in ecosystems where they're taking over and affecting other species.

And finally, of course, climate change, which is rising fast, is one of the most important impacts on nature. And of course, nature loss itself is reinforced, it's kind of a change, so there is a bit of a vicious cycle developing there between these two phenomena.

Right, interesting. So that reminds me, you mentioned climate change as the fifth biggest threat. The intergovernmental panel on climate change, the IPCC, says that the link between climate change and biodiversity loss is clear.

Can you put some more words to this? Can you explain this a bit for us?  

It's super clear in two senses. The first one is that we have now clear data that over 50 % of all the CO2 emissions of anthropogenic nature emitted by us over the last several decades have been neutralized by natural ecosystems.

So, imagine if you didn't have the ocean, forest, wetlands to absorb these CO2 that we have emitted through our industrial processes, agriculture, et cetera, et cetera, over the last few decades, we would have a global warming which will not just be close to 1.5 as we have today, but probably close to 3. So this is a fundamental role that nature has played in mitigating the impact of climate change today.

But then you look at the other side of the story, which is the negative impacts on nature and actually there is a huge amount of carbon that has been stored over the millennia, millions of years, in different systems, including of course burning fossil fuel. And this visual of the forest fire, forest fire is incentivized by climate change at a higher temperature, but forest fires are also emitting and releasing in the atmosphere, millions of tons of carbon that was sequestered by the forest itself. And so this is the double relationship between nature and climate.

On one hand, nature is a regulator of the climate, and on the other hand, when we destroy nature, we actually affect climate directly.

So in other words, you can't fight climate change without protecting nature, and you can't protect nature without fighting climate change.

That's absolutely correct. That's how we need to turn the whole vicious circle of today where each is reinforcing the other into a virtuous circle we’re actually protecting nature, we mitigate climate change and we make nature more resilient at the same time.

Great, I understand.

So let’s talk about the concept of nature Positive. Can you define it for us?

So the first thing to say about Nature positive is that it is used too often as a slogan, but it’s not. Nature positive is a measurable global goal.

And in fact it has a parallel in the concept of carbon neutral, except nature positive is not neutral, its positive, net positive biodiversity, simply because nature can recover, can restore itself, can come back if given the chance, and very quickly, we have so many examples on land, in the ocean, in freshwater systems of nature coming back when we actually have to come back. And so the idea of nature positive is to set a global goal for nature like we have for climate, carbon neutrality and emissions that drives every sector in society to contribute to that goal in order to deliver more nature at the end of the decade, no less. That's the simple report, this combination of nature positive. But also it is a very disruptive goal, like carbon neutrality.

Carbon neutrality has disrupted the energy sector, sent the signal to the markets that we needed to move away from fossil fuel consumption and move to renewable energy. That paved the way to the massive rise of investment and use of renewable energy.

We know we are behind, but that revolution has started, thanks to this global goal on climate. Now, December 2022, the world has agreed on a global goal for nature.

And that is disruptive of all the other sectors that are today responsible for natural loss, agriculture, fishing, forestry, infrastructure, mining. And so basically it's about transitioning these sectors from a nature negative practice to a nature positive practice.

Practice’s that are able to conserve and restore the nature that we need back. Okay, so what's the role of individual companies in all of this? You're talking on a sector level, but when you break it down for an individual company, what can they do to change their operations that is to make them more nature positive?

Our footprint on the natural world comes from our production and consumption model. And by the way, it's not just the production, but it's also a big responsibility on the consuming side of the story. But when it comes to companies, they've been, and they still are, they've been responsible for the portability of the planet.

So, they can become the solution. And in order to do that, the most important thing for a company is to begin to actually assess the impacts that they are having on the natural world, depending on their production, approaches, systems, supply chain, et cetera, and do that with the high integrity. It's really looking at the real impact that they're having, and then moving to what we call a mitigation hierarchy, a mitigation process, that looks at what is possible, what impacts can be avoided, what impacts can be mitigated and reduced, what can be restored, and what the company activity has actually impacted. And finally, but only finally, when it comes to the unavoidable impacts, what can be compensated, how that can be compensated. And this is the kind of controversial discussion today of offsets and credits and compensation. But if you follow this hierarchy, the company can assure a high integrity approach that will deliver many positive outcomes, in terms of nature conservation, restoration, and sustainable practices.

Okay, that sounds easy.

Well, look, it is easy. When you say it like that. It is easy. It shouldn't be too difficult. I mean, of course, you know, it requires effort. But if you then move into why a company should do that, then actually it's not only a question of being easy or not. It's a question of being necessary because increasingly there is a business case for companies and for the whole economy as a whole to really look at understanding what they depend on from nature and those dependencies are huge.

If you don't reduce the impact on those dependencies, those impacts will quickly move into risk and even quicker moving to costs. And that's exactly what we are seeing today with many companies that are suffering from the lack of access to natural resources, take for example water, that are fundamental not just for agriculture, but also for all the manufacturing and many industrial processes they would depend on.

So, it's not easy, but it's not impossible and actually is necessary. It's necessary for the sustainability of the whole society and its economy by maintaining healthy and resilient and productive natural systems.

So, you call this building a business case, basically, for protecting nature, figuring out your dependencies, your risks, your opportunities, and your costs and all of that. That's what you would call building a business case for the company?

Well, that's definitely the business case, because if companies ignore this process of understanding how they can limit their impact, they will continue to basically do what the economy has done until now overall, which is destroying the very foundation of its own success, the natural world. The natural world that provides goods and resources, services that are fundamental to its own growth. If you look at the evolution of the economic growth over the last 70 years, and if you look at this, you know, this is up and up and up, there's been a massive economic growth in terms of actual financial capital. But if you look at what that has been mirrored with is a complete opposite direction and decline of the natural world.

 So it's clear that economy until now has been based on using unsustainably the natural resources. And as soon as the natural resources are beginning not to provide any more, those resources and services that have been basing our economy until now, I mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand what's gonna happen, right? Development will stop and potentially regress and there will be big issues, economically, social security and everything. So our economy depend on maintaining direct balance with nature. –

All right, you put it that way. It's pretty much a no  -brainer. There's a bigger risk in terms of not protecting nature for a lot of companies as their resources may begin to dwindle and become basically unacceptable.

Yes, and we don't want to wait for that also because now we are facing this issue that is quite difficult to comprehend for our minds because it's the first time ever that it happened in our history as a species, let alone civilization, which is the concept of tipping point. Points where some entire systems, whether it are weather systems or ecological systems like the Amazon, are actually going to collapse and change state irreversibly. And that is something that we just don't want. Because the stability of the natural world, the stability of the planet, particularly in the last 10 ,000 years after the last ice age, has been an absolute foundation for the blooming, the flourishing of our civilization and our economy.

The other thing to say, which is super important, is not just about doing all the stuff, but also be transparent and report and disclose both the impacts, the negative impacts, but also the positive results. And for that, we also need to support companies in providing frameworks, first of all, that they can use, because things that are too complicated are not gonna work, but also the right metrics, which measure the outcomes of their mitigation. And that's still not that clear.

So, this is something where actually the community science and conservation and corporate community needs to come together and agree what those metrics are.

So, they are meaningful scientifically, they make sense, their integrity, but also they're practical for companies to be able to use.

Yeah, to that point, the TNFD has just been finalized, isn't that right?

Yes, the TNFD, the task force on nature -related financial disclosure, they have developed recommendations including a number of metrics that are particularly referring to impacts and disclosure of impacts is super helpful.

What we still need to agree as a global community are the metrics that also measure the end result. Because at the end of the day, you take all these measures to assess, to mitigate, to disclose, but you also need a metric and a measure that demonstrate that all that you've done has actually resulted in a net positive outcome for nature.

Like in a net zero outcome for your emissions. And so that metric on the state of nature, they're all there, but we just need to agree what are the most practical and usable and minimum and center.

Right. That makes sense. So I guess like many climate issues, this is another one that is just part of a journey for many companies. It will be a long -term initiative, I suppose.

Well, it is a long -term initiative, but on the other hand, we don't have a long time. time. So it's where I think we need to strike a very pragmatic balance between what we can really do, what we can really measure, and then get to the point of having even better and more reliable frameworks in the future. But we know enough today, and I think we will have to agree very quickly on the overall metrics to allow companies to take action now.

Well, that's good. That's at least a start. And you're right. It doesn't have to be perfect. does it? It just has to be a start. So if a company is on this sort of nature positive journey, how do you think they should be engaging their stakeholders to be a part of this journey? - I mean, companies now are facing three main pressures, if you like, related to different stakeholders with different audiences at the same time. One is the compliance pressures. Increasingly, regulators are putting in place norms and demands on companies exactly to assess, mitigate, and disclose.

Most of the schemes are voluntary now, but we're moving towards actually a regulatory effort, which is important because we need to create a level playing field. We need to create a regulation that actually applies to everybody and comparable as well across companies, sectors, et cetera. The second pressure is obviously financial impacts, new to stream weather events, lack of access to resources, water, for example, et cetera.

So there is also, there's really to be pressure to comply with the initial positive end and carbon neutral goal because the risks for the company are growing.

And then the third one is cost is reputational. So the public consumers and many companies. are expecting companies to begin to change and to comply with these global goals that are basically gonna to secure a safe future for all of us.

So these are the three pressures that companies are confronted with today, which I think we should all think are positive pressures, pressures that incentivize change for good.

That makes good sense. Do you think it benefits the company to engage all of their stakeholders in the journey, in terms of regulators, governments, investors, other stakeholders?

Companies are also increasingly demanding for clarity and regulation because they know they have to and they want to be seen as contributing positively to these agendas, to the environmental agenda. And so this is actually, in an interesting way, moving also the responsibility to the governments and the regulator themselves, because let's not forget, today, when you look at public money spent on nature, we're talking about less than 100 billion globally, mainly from domestic budgets. When you look at public money spent to support activities which are nature negative, we're talking about $1 .7 trillion per year.

So the right hand is giving a little pennies for nature, and the left hand is chopping it with the axe. So clearly there is a paradox here that governments need to address, and they need to shift harmful subsidies and incentives that are now driving the economy in the wrong direction in a negative direction to support the transition toward a nature -positive approach to production and consumption.

And that needs to happen fast because it's a huge amount of money that are really basically locking up the system.

Great. I understand. So, Marco, let's talk about you for a minute.

You have been one of nature's biggest advocates your whole life. life. How did you get started in this kind of work?

You don't start. You just are born with it. When I was four years old, my mother was telling me that it was collecting leaves and shells and things and bringing it to my room. So I was born with that. But actually, you know, there is this fascination for nature, you know, about some more strongly than others. Perhaps I was probably hyper-biophilic, but I think the good news is that everybody does have that. And we know because, you know, we all enjoy a stroll in the park, in the city. So that's how it started. It was just inside me and it blew. Then my mother and my father, of course, helped me cultivate it.

So to that end, what do you think ordinary people, nature lovers, for example, can do in their daily lives to sort of support nature and biodiversity?

Well, it's not just nature lovers. I think these days, the issue I said earlier, right, the issue of nature is not just about nature. It's actually more about us. When we say we're going to save the planet, that's the arrogance that we should drop.

It's not about saving the planet. The planet is going to go on. The planet is going to reorganize itself, rebalance itself and go plenty of time. It's us, particularly our children and their children are going to suffer the consequences.

Nature conservation today is not just a moral duty towards the other living organisms on the planet. It's actually more of a moral duty vis -à -vis the future human organisms that will appear on the planet.

And so the most important thing that everyone in this single life could do for nature and for our future is to pay attention to what we consume.

Consume less, first of all, because you consume a lot more what we really need in most cases. Of course, huge inequality around the world when talking about developed economies.

Then consume better because there are some products that have much more high impact on nature than others. And then don't waste because that's another problem, another plague of our society.

We consume too much, we consume things which have a very high impact, and we waste a lot of what we consume. And so those are three things that really...

And when you think, "Oh, but can I make a difference by a little behaviour in my own life?" Always think to multiply that little behaviour times eight plus billion. And if you all behave like this, the impact on the environment, positive impact on the environment will be massive.

It's a super good reminder, Marco. I mean, we all just need to become better consumers, smarter and less wasteful, and thinking about nature with every move that we make.

Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me today. I really enjoyed it.

It's my pleasure. Thanks for the invitation. It's so important to be talking about these issues.