CISL COP16 Briefing - Restoring Nature: Reimagining Growth

1. Shift the narrative

The world currently lacks models of – and visions for – social progress and economic growth that systematically enhance rather than erode nature. We consequently lack regulatory and market frameworks that require and incentivise the protection and restoration of nature.

We need compelling political narratives that integrate nature into growth, competitiveness, security and social development imperatives. Business and finance have a role to play in building momentum, political engagement and understanding around alternative views of and approaches to the economy that incorporate and support nature.  

Examples:  

• CISL’s discussion paper Survival of the Fittest: From ESG to Competitive Sustainability makes the business case for designing out the conflict between long-term sustainability and short-term commerciality.  
• Rachel Garrett, Moran Professor of Conservation and Development at Cambridge University, supports the development of more transformative visions for conservation. “Socio-bioeconomies” seek to build on the unique social, cultural and biological diversity of tropical forests as the basis of economic development, rather than clearing forests for mines, timber, and low-diversity agriculture. This idea is included in Brazil’s newest deforestation prevention plan. Read more in Rachel’s blog: Beyond 'no,' more positive visions for conservation need communication
• CISL’s Global Leadership Summit in February 2024 explored the tough and courageous decisions needed from leaders to inspire and empower action at scale to bend the curve on the climate and nature crisis.
• A groundbreaking Competitive Sustainability Index from CISL measures the EU’s competitive sustainability performance as it faces an unprecedented set of interconnected crises. The tool offers a forward-looking way to assess the most effective approach to the integration of sustainability imperatives.

2. Embed nature in economic, policy and commercial decision-making

This can be achieved by building capability and decision support tools to make effective decisions that factor and price in nature-related risk, opportunity and impact.

Policy

Place nature at the heart of policy making and regulation, particularly for key sectors like agriculture and food production, land and water management and extractive industries. Support the necessary regulatory and structural shifts to make this happen. Only by delivering effective stewardship of nature will policymakers be able to provide the security and prosperity that underpin people’s livelihoods and sense of wellbeing. Strong policy incentives will be instrumental in determining the success of our efforts to revitalise nature. 

Examples:  

• CLG Europe’s Business Briefing: From Risk to Resilience explores the urgent mission to restore Europe’s ailing natural habitats and examines the pivotal involvement of corporations and businesses, shedding light on the EU Nature Restoration Law. Its Policy Briefing: The Green Deal and Beyond offers “four deals” with specific policy recommendations to complement the European Green Deal. 
• CLG UK’s Policy Briefing: Unleashing the green economy includes five recommendations and examples from leading businesses on how to build a sustainable, competitive and resilient economy.

Business

Integrate nature as a core component of business models, innovation and strategy, and shift value chains, industries and supply chains to address the drivers of nature destruction. Think differently about business models to ensure they restore and protect nature rather than destroy it, building on an understanding that there can be no business on a dead planet. Identify where innovation is needed and catalyse, foster and scale promising solutions. Enable collaboration across sectors to accelerate transition. 

Examples:  

• CISL’s Better Business report, supported by A-Track, investigates the barriers and opportunities to scaling up and integrating nature positive aligned business models
• CISL's preparatory guide on nature integration for the agri-food sector helps businesses understand nature-related risks and disclosure frameworks that can promote nature-positive action
• CISL and The Fashion Pact's first biodiversity roadmap furthers the development and implementation of biodiversity strategies across the fashion, textile and apparel sector.

Finance

Leverage finance as a lever for change and reorientation of financial flows towards the support of nature. Financing the transition to an economy that works with nature requires knowledge and understanding of the many ways businesses impact – and depend on – the natural world. Addressing nature loss will address material financial risks and open up new opportunities.   

Examples:  

• CISL’s Scaling Finance for Nature report, supported by A Track, explores how to scale private capital’s meaningful contribution to a nature-positive economy.
• CISL's insurance leadership group, ClimateWise, offers a roadmap to help the insurance sector move towards nature-positive underwriting. In collaboration with MS Amlin, ClimateWise’s use case showcases a debt-for-nature swap supported by credit insurance for marine conservation in Ecuador.
• CISL’s Centre for Sustainable Finance outlines the necessity to adjust the international financial architecture to unlock financing for nature and climate in its Everything, Everywhere, All At Once report.  
• CISL’s Let’s Discuss Nature with Climate: Engagement Guide aims to support the market-wide transformation towards a nature-positive economy by evolving the interaction between banks and investment managers and their portfolio clients and investee companies.

3. Enable better-informed and collaborative decision-making on the future of places – putting community and people at the centre

Building shared understanding, language, ambitions and decision support frameworks will enable all stakeholders to make joined-up decisions to steward finite resources in ways that meet multiple needs. Achieving the goals of the Global Biodiversity Framework is a societal effort, which includes collaboration with Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, changes in consumption patterns as consumers, and capacity-building to support implantation of processes and policies to safeguard nature.   

This will involve developing shared approaches to natural assets (like land and water) that allow them to be managed in a way that protects and restores thriving ecosystems and communities. Limited natural assets like land and water will be increasingly critical, not only to meet people’s increasing needs but also to provide space for nature and biodiversity, and continue to provide a way to reduce rather than contribute to climate change. Collaboration is key to managing our natural assets in a way that benefits nature while continuing to meet people’s needs into the future. Indigenous knowledge and the need to engage stakeholders including local communities in discussions around natural asset management is critical.   

Examples:  

• CISL’s regenerative nature-positive agriculture and land management models offer a blueprint that support improved biodiversity and water quality.  
• Leading organisations signed and renewed their commitments to The Catchment Management Declaration, which aims to accelerate action for a multisector approach to water catchment management. 
• Projects underway in the Gola Rainforest in Sierra Leone and Liberia offer examples of longstanding partnership work between local communities, civil society and governments to ensure that forest protection is in parallel to strengthened local livelihood opportunities which in Sierra Leone is partly funded through carbon credits. This will be the topic of a COP16 side event, Putting The Biodiversity Plan into action: Sustainable financing for transboundary conservation and livelihood support in the Gola Rainforest.

4. Drive innovation in, and transformation of, critical sectors and supply chains

To deliver the new business models required, we need to unlock both new visions for how critical nature-connected sectors operate and pathways to achieve them. That transformation requires innovative models of new ways of operating, and understanding of the transformations required to scale them up. We need to support new nature-positive start-ups and innovators, and enable the collaboration required to allow them to scale up and become the basis for new systems and structures.

To reverse nature loss in this critical decade, business, government and finance need to move from commitment towards action – our future economic and social prosperity depend on it. 

This will require leaders to understand the urgency of the threat we face, integrate nature into their decision-making and work together to reset our relationship with nature by shifting our economic system to one that aligns with a nature-positive future.   

Our role is to support the decision-makers that will accelerate this transition, providing them with the tools, safe spaces, insight and rationale they need to set us on an irreversible trajectory to a more harmonious relationship with the natural world.  

CISL’s Canopy community supports a host of start ups that are focused on developing nature-positive solutions, including Earthblox, Gentian, Food Squared and Basecamp Research food systems accelerator.

The Aviation Impact Accelerator (AIA) is a global initiative jointly led by the University of Cambridge’s Whittle Laboratory and Institute for Sustainability Leadership. It brings together experts from across the sector and beyond to accelerate the transition to climate-neutral aviation.

CISL has convened a number of collaborations to help companies work towards eliminating plastic packaging waste, under the heading the Future of Plastic Packaging. Through working collaboratively across the value chain, government and society, CISL’s systemic approach enables stakeholders to rethink existing business models, implement workable solutions and have the greatest impact.