Why nature loss should be measured in the same way carbon emissions are tracked

More nature in the world is a beautiful goal, wouldn’t you agree? Ageing forests protecting an abundance of life above and below the soil, bees and butterflies buzzing over wildflower meadows, fast-flowing rivers teeming with fish running into oceans filled with life we cannot see but know is there.

The best part, however, is that a nature-positive world is about so much more than beauty. Nature in recovery is a key indicator of the planet being in recovery, and the future of humanity is entwined with the need for this recovery.

But global wildlife populations have shrunk by an average of 73% in the past 50 years, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature’s 2024 Living Planet report. It reveals that human activity continues to drive biodiversity loss, leading to potentially catastrophic consequences – not least damaging Earth’s life-support systems and posing grave threats to humanity.

Although humans have long felt a moral obligation to protect nature, we are only just starting to appreciate the material importance of nature to our society and economy.

Two years ago, at COP15 in Montreal, 196 governments agreed to ​​the most ambitious framework on biodiversity we’ve ever had – the Global Biodiversity Framework. This included an explicit 2030 goal “to halt and reverse nature loss to put nature on a path to recovery”. This global goal is wonderfully simple: there should be more biodiversity at the end of this decade than there was at the start of it. One of the key challenges now is to work out how to measure nature restoration to know if we are succeeding.

This is a significant challenge. At this year’s biodiversity conference, COP16, held in the Colombian city of Cali, countries should have come to the table with detailed strategies and plans describing how they intend to contribute to global biodiversity targets. But more than three quarters of them missed the deadline to do this. Meanwhile nature continues to decline.

COP16 concluded with the recognition of the role of Indigenous Peoples and local communities as vital stewards of nature and an agreement that companies profiting from nature's genetic data should pay towards its protection through a global fund. These are both positive steps. However, the fundamental issue of financial flows going to developing countries created deadlock among countries.

Encouragingly, more companies and financial institutions are beginning to understand the vital importance of nature. They want to work out how they depend on and impact nature so they can be net positive for nature – or nature positive – as well as net zero. To do this, they need consistent and comparable ways to measure outcomes and gauge if their efforts to help secure a nature-positive world are on track.

Currently, there is no common approach to measure nature’s decline or recovery. Hundreds of different metrics are being used to measure the state of nature, making it challenging to select the right minimum set of metrics to evaluate success from global to local scales.

That’s why the Nature Positive Initiative has been convening and consulting with NGOs and business platforms, standard-setting and guidance-giving organizations and academics from across the world. We’re asking those who want to join the conversation to explore how to create a framework to measure the state of nature in ways that have wide support and agreement.

Now, we’re moving onto the next step: Developing a credible set of biodiversity metrics that help us to measure whether nature is recovering.

Nature is complex, of course. New species are discovered every year and researchers continually gain new insights into the interrelationships and interdependencies between them. But much more remains undiscovered. So how can we measure what we do not fully understand? The key is to find the right proxies to help us gauge whether nature is in recovery.

A similar challenge once existed when measuring climate change. Progressing towards the 1.5 degree Celsius goal also involves a complex field of metrics and interrelationships. Through the proxy of CO2 equivalent we now have consensus and alignment around achieving net zero. This means we can hold each other accountable for how close – or how far – we are from this goal at an individual, company and country level.

We need to enable every actor to begin measuring their contribution to nature recovery in a similar way to how they measure their carbon footprints. Whether someone is working in a financial institution or on a farm; whether they are based in Papa New Guinea or in Finland – we need to be able to answer the question: Is nature better or worse off as a result of our actions and decisions?

The Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreement to halt and reverse nature loss means this is no longer an optional question. Governments are beginning to regulate and set policies to respond to this.

This past summer, the EU passed the Nature Restoration Law, which sets binding targets to restore degraded ecosystems. From 2025 onwards, businesses in Europe or those doing business with Europe will need to begin reporting on their impacts and dependencies on nature through a new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.

Other jurisdictions are also moving in a similar direction. Botswana has introduced voluntary nature-related disclosure guidance for companies listed on its stock exchange. At present, many businesses have little idea of where to start on measuring their current impact on biodiversity or the outcome of their mitigation approaches, so this is essential work.

But this is about more than compliance. Ultimately, it’s about all of us contributing to nature in recovery. At the end of the day, what really matters is to see biodiversity thriving – fish, butterflies, bees, birds in abundance. Only then can we be sure that our mitigation strategies are working and that our economies and wellbeing can continue to thrive. This will be the point when we can say we’re no longer taking nature for granted and we appreciate how our success is bound up with its success. We must recognise that nature is necessary for our survival and also a thing of beauty in its own right.