Our key takeaway: More and more companies are demonstrating attention, effort and action on the urgent climate crisis. While this is an unqualified positive for the world, we need more companies to take the same pathways to protecting nature and biodiversity. Many of these actions can mirror what companies have done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: carrying out science-based assessments to understand their impact on nature and biodiversity; creating measurable management plans to prevent or mitigate their impacts on nature; ensuring that lobbying associations are aligned with nature-positive agendas; tracking and disclosing more, and—crucially—continuing to respect the rights of people who can be negatively impacted by nature and biodiversity loss, especially indigenous peoples and land-based communities. Indeed, the traditional knowledge and ecosystem protection approaches lived by many communities are a source of learning for companies and others.
The World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) launched the 2022 results of its first round of assessments on how companies are reducing their negative impacts on nature and contributing to protection and restoration ecosystems. The benchmark covers 400 companies across 8 industries: