U.N. body confirms what we have known for decades: Companies that pillage nature risk extinction
24 February 2026 - Lindsay Hooper, CISL, CEO, discusses why the warnings about nature loss have become impossible for businesses to ignore. Despite clear evidence that degrading natural systems threatens economic stability, food security and long‑term profitability, global markets continue to undervalue and overexploit nature. Lindsay outlines how emerging data, regulatory shifts and practical tools are helping companies address nature‑related risks and why investing in resilient, nature‑positive business models is now essential for future competitiveness.
Five years ago, the economist Partha Dasgupta warned that business was self-cannibalising: consuming the natural systems it depends on as if they were infinite, while investing almost nothing in their protection or renewal.
At that time the global economy was still reeling from COVID-19. Having stared into the abyss of systemic collapse, one might have expected corporate leaders to wake up to the need to mitigate future threats. Yet five years later, nature continues to be pillaged for profit. Left unchecked, it could cost the global economy an estimated $2.15 trillion within the next five years.
It is clear that leaders across private and public sectors recognise the risk. The World Economic Forum’s annual risk survey ranks biodiversity loss as the number one long-term global risk, ahead of conflict and trade tensions.
UK intelligence chiefs warn that global nature loss threatens national security through food shortages, drought and mass migration. Food industry leaders are also highlighting huge threats to food security and the viability of their businesses.
It's not just about mitigating risk. There are huge financial opportunities waiting to be reaped from investing in nature. The U.N. estimates that between $563 billion and $5.7 trillion worth of pharmaceutical profits for cancer medicines remain undiscovered in marine species alone.
The Good Food Institute lists more than 2,000 active businesses in the alternative protein space, focused on building resilient, affordable supply chains that slash water, land use and carbon emissions. Their motivation is not reputational or “saving the planet” but maintaining reliable inputs in an increasingly unstable world, and meeting global nutrition needs in cost-efficient, sustainable ways.
In spite of the compelling case for action, nature is being destroyed faster than it can regenerate. Since 1992, global produced capital per person has more than doubled, while stocks of natural capital have fallen by around 40%.
Our current market and accounting structures and incentives are driving this. Despite decades of discussion, it remains more profitable in the short term to destroy nature than to protect it, and trillions of dollars of economic activity that degrade nature are propped up by entrenched subsidies and financial incentives. It’s a maddening assault on both business 101 and our natural resources.
If a company were depleting any other core asset at this rate, it would trigger immediate alarm. No board would tolerate burning through cash reserves. No investor would back a firm stripping its factories of machinery without reinvestment, or exhausting its workforce without replacing skills and capacity. Yet this is precisely how nature has been treated for decades. The result is not only environmental decline but growing commercial and financial system fragility.
This week, a landmark new assessment from Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), endorsed by more than 150 governments and drawing on scientists and Indigenous leaders, delivered another crystal-clear warning: “Either lead the way towards a more sustainable global economy or ultimately risk extinction.”
In essence, the world's leading scientific authority on nature has produced a compelling business case that characterises those ignoring the risks and delaying action as having poor business acumen.
To date, complexity, bureaucracy and lack of data have all been reasons for inaction, and nature-related data and solutions are undeniably complex. But complexity has never been an excuse for inaction in finance, risk or innovation. Businesses manage currency volatility, cyber threats and geopolitical instability every day. Nature risk is no different; in fact, it underpins all of them.
In an important step forward, this IPBES report distills an extensive body of sources to cut through the bureaucracy. It delivers a clear list of options for action by businesses and finance actors at all levels.
Encouragingly, some progress exists. More than 600 companies have publicly committed to adopting nature-related reporting and 150 organisations are setting science-based targets for nature. Now, the EU is requiring companies to report on their nature impacts for the first time.
Reporting and disclosure are a critical start, and essential to avoid greenwashing, but won’t close the gap. As the report highlights, we need to shift market structures and sentiment to incentivise business practices that protect the natural systems on which they depend, and effective risk- management approaches to more accurately price and address nature related risks.
Investor confidence, access to capital and long-term competitiveness is already starting to depend on credible nature strategies. The new Deforestation Investor Group sees investors mitigating deforestation risks within their portfolios. My own Institute, CISL, has been working with multiple Asian banks, supported by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, to show how nature-related dependencies can be translated into practical credit risk and lending decisions in high-exposure supply chains.
We have also been working to identify and scale up nature-positive business models, which can harness commercial opportunities, delivering both financial value and better outcomes for nature.
But much more is needed. Not more distant targets, hero projects or bureaucracy, but practical, real-world action. As Diageo CEO Dave Lewis wrote recently in the Financial Times, boards should treat nature risk as central to commercial viability and profitability. In their own interests, businesses should be taking action now within their own operations, and use their influence to shift practices across supply chains and markets.
Importantly, the private sector should demand that governments create an enabling environment by reforming subsidies that reward degradation, punishing illegal deforestation and pollution, using their procurement budgets to help shift markets, and undertaking regulatory and planning reforms to unblock scaling of credible solutions.
Ultimately, nature does not operate within borders, and neither do supply chains. Protecting the bottom line, therefore, means investing in the ecosystems and nature-rich countries that underpin global markets. This is no longer a question of ideology. It is simply good business.
First published by Reuters 10 Februrary 2026