A study warns that vigilance is needed to prevent the concept of a Nature Positive world being threatened by greenwashing. Otherwise, there is a danger that Nature Positive approaches may undermine existing frameworks designed to minimise the impacts of human activities on biodiversity.
The concept of Nature Positive envisages a planet where the current rapid loss of biodiversity is halted and reversed, and nature is restored.
This is vitally and urgently needed in order to stop the upcoming global mass extinction of species as a result of human destruction of nature, and to maintain the prosperity and wellbeing of humanity, which relies on nature for food, water, clean air, and a healthy environment.
Nature Positive has already become a popular phrase within the conservation community, and has been likened to the concept of Net Zero for climate change campaigns.
Businesses, governments, financiers and conservation organisations have rapidly embraced the idea and made pledges to become Nature Positive.
However, an international team of researchers has concluded that some of these pledges lack the rigorous scientific framework needed to achieve real impacts. This puts Nature Positive commitments at risk of becoming little more than greenwash: misleading or deceptive publicity disseminated by an organisation so as to present an environmentally responsible public image.
Furthermore, a Nature Positive approach may even cause active harm if it distracts from existing schemes that focus on avoiding and reducing the harmful impacts of economic development on biodiversity.
The research team outlined several instances where Nature Positive greenwashing is already taking place.
- Loose application of the term by NGOs, to mean simply “doing things that are good for nature”, for example as part of a broader strategy to tackle climate change
- Companies linking the concept with questionable biodiversity credit schemes, whose impact cannot be verified
- Proposals by the Australian Government to relax like-for-like compensation requirements. This would allow losses of already highly threatened biodiversity, for which offsets are difficult or impossible, as long as a more general Nature Positive outcome is achieved.
Contributing author Professor Dame EJ Milner-Gulland (Department of Biology, University of Oxford) said, “The concept of Nature Positive provides an optimistic and aspirational vision of the future we want for humanity and for nature. But we mustn’t let aspirational phrases substitute for taking practical steps to protect nature from damage as much as possible, and ensuring that any damage that is done is fully and demonstrably compensated for. There can be no shortcuts.”
Global Mitigation Hierarchy
The mitigation hierarchy is a global framework for businesses to address biodiversity loss to maximise tangible change. It has a prioritised approach to control negative impacts on the environment, which is – avoidance, mitigation, compensation and enhancement
Avoidance – Businesses should first avoid harming biodiversity whenever possible. This will require an understanding of how likely their operations or proposed projects are to have negative impacts on biodiversity and whether the location is in, or close to, areas of importance to biodiversity. Potential impacts can be identified before they occur by carrying out high-level screening. This can be done relatively quickly and inexpensively and will provide vital information at the project planning stage, helping you to avoid or minimise any impacts.
Mitigation – Where impacts cannot be avoided completely, measures should be put in place to mitigate any harm to biodiversity. For example, a project’s construction methods or a business’s operations might, if unmitigated, have the potential to create pollution, thus affecting nature on adjacent land or further afield. Businesses should then minimise the damage through eliminating or reducing impacts where they cannot be avoided. This could involve reducing pollution by adopting different working methods or equipment or preventing its spread through the use of products or techniques that capture the pollution, enabling its safe removal.
Compensation – If, despite all best efforts to avoid or mitigate, the project or operation is predicted to have an impact on biodiversity then rehabilitation and restoration should be planned before that damage occurs and should be implemented at an appropriate stage in the process. Although rehabilitation only aims to restore basic ecosystem functions, restoration strives to achieve a fully operational ecosystem comparable to the original area.
The use of nature-based solutions is growing in popularity as a way of trying to restore degraded or damaged ecosystems and compensating for biodiversity that has been lost or damaged during developments. Nature-based solutions also provide a host of additional benefits, for example, through carbon sequestration, flood alleviation, reducing soil erosion, enhancing water quality and providing wellbeing and recreational benefits for people and reinforcing their relationship with the natural world. Nature-based solutions can be used to achieve no net loss or net-positive biodiversity and can address impacts caused by a company’s direct operational activities or more widely to address the indirect impacts caused by activities that take place within its value chain.
Enhancement – The above three steps encompass all actions a business can take to reduce the impacts of a project or its operations on biodiversity. However, they rarely result in no net biodiversity loss, so additional steps are often required. These steps can be offsets that compensate for the harm caused and enable businesses to achieve a net positive biodiversity outcome.
Owing to the complexity of ecological networks, areas cannot be considered as interchangeable, for example, a biodiversity offset scheme cannot be justified if it threatens an endangered species. Therefore, when businesses are considering offsetting, they should undertake research into the schemes through detailed assessments of the impact on existing biodiversity and visual amenity of the site and take independent advice from an ecologist to confirm if the activity will deliver the required results.