Business priorities for halting and reversing nature loss

Businesses are increasingly mainstreaming nature across core decision-making.
Companies are folding biodiversity into governance, financial risk assessment,
supply-chain due diligence and innovation spending.

Yet the pace of that shift depends on governments delivering on commitments
agreed under the Global Biodiversity Framework. Without the needed policy
certainty, financing mechanisms, implementation pathways and enabling
conditions, business cannot act at the scale nature loss demands.

At the 17th Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity
(COP17), ICC is urging parties to move from setting ambition to delivering results
for the real economy and a nature positive transition.

What are the stakes for businesses and governments?

More than half of global GDP is moderately or highly dependent on nature,
leaving supply chains, infrastructure and long-term investment value exposed to
material and growing risk. Meanwhile the finance gap needed to meet 2030
targets remains vast – estimated at over US$700 billion a year by the UN
Environment Programme or as high as US$942 billion by Bloomberg – and many
National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans, the vehicles meant to close it,
remain delayed or under-resourced.

What opportunity does COP17 present?

COP17 will mark the first global review of collective progress under the Kunming
Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) – the global roadmap to halt and
reverse nature loss by 2030 and beyond.

ICC is calling for this review to mark a shift from framework-setting to delivery at
scale. That means calling for practical, coherent and investable outcomes that
enable businesses of all sizes and sectors to contribute to the goals and targets of
the Global Biodiversity Framework while supporting sustainable growth,
productivity and long-term economic resilience.

ICC recommendations:

• Creating clear, coherent and investable biodiversity policy frameworks that provide predictable signals, reduce fragmentation and align biodiversity objectives with economic growth and competitiveness.  
• Mobilising and de-risking private finance for nature through blended finance, innovative financial instruments and investment-friendly policy environments that help close the biodiversity finance gap.  
• Advancing credible and interoperable nature metrics and disclosures to reduce reporting complexity and improve the usability of biodiversity-related information.  
• Enabling nature-positive supply chains and trade, including practical, coherent and proportionate approaches to traceability, due diligence and sustainable production.  
• Promoting integrity, equity and workable implementation, with robust social and environmental safeguards and meaningful engagement with indigenous peoples and local communities, to create systems that support sustainable livelihoods and long-term economic resilience. 
• Harnessing innovation, technology and research to accelerate biodiversity conservation, restoration and sustainable use with systems that support innovation as well as well-designed, workable, access and benefit-sharing frameworks.  
• Strengthening synergies across the Rio Conventions to improve policy coherence between biodiversity, climate and land degradation agendas.  

COP17 must be a turning point for biodiversity policy. Businesses stand ready to
invest, innovate and scale solutions for nature, but success will depend on strong
partnerships between governments, the private sector and wider stakeholders.

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