What is your business’s nature footprint?

As the global economy transitions in response to climate change, businesses and citizens are increasingly considering their carbon footprints in decision-making. Yet, many remain unaware of their “nature footprint”, despite nature’s critical role in the global economy.

World Economic Forum research highlights that over half of global GDP highly or moderately depends on nature, putting it at imminent risk if nature loss persists.

Historically, nature’s value has been understated, often framed as an “externality” – implying it lies outside core business models. This miscategorization narrows our view of nature to either non-living natural assets like timber and coal, or living assets like tigers, rainforests and polar landscapes. In reality, nature is integral to everyday life: it’s the air we breathe, the water for cooling data centres, the lithium in phone batteries, and the cotton in our T-shirts. Nature is not just in the Amazon and the Arctic – it’s at the heart of our businesses and the global economy.

Today, leading companies are integrating “net zero” with “nature-positive” goals: halting and reversing nature loss by 2030, as set out in the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. In the last few months of 2024, the three UN Conferences of the Parties (COP) on climate, biodiversity and desertification landed in the same year, emphasizing the interconnection between nature loss, climate change and a just transition for society.

As the global community intensifies action on the dual crises of climate and nature, understanding business’ nature footprint is more urgent than ever.

A “nature footprint”, also known as an environmental or ecological footprint, is a holistic understanding of a company’s impacts and dependencies on nature.

Unlike a company’s greenhouse gas emissions, which can be estimated and communicated with a single unit – tonnes of CO2 equivalent – nature impact is multidimensional and local.

– A business may contribute to nature loss through the five global direct drivers. Climate change is one of them, but land, freshwater and ocean use change, pollution, natural resource use and exploitation, and invasive alien species are also major forces that degrade ecosystems and drive biodiversity loss. These impacts vary across activities and geographies.

– Businesses also depend on nature for what are called “ecosystem services”, such as clean water, healthy soils, climate regulation, and even nature’s spiritual, artistic and educational value.

– Take the personal care sector, for example: a global personal care producer generates greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions producing and transporting its goods, but also plastic waste from packaging, wastewater from manufacturing, and land use change in growing raw materials like cotton.

Likewise, this company relies heavily on water – which makes up 80% of shampoo – with differing dependencies on watersheds in India and Norway, for example. By understanding their nature impacts and dependencies, companies will be in a stronger position to build operations and supply chain resilience, take meaningful action to reduce their impacts, and capture valuable market opportunities.

Companies can also drive further progress and support cross-sectoral collaboration in three ways:

1. They can share “nature footprint” data with their upstream and downstream supply chains to increase transparency and support collective action.

2. They can collaborate with peers, civil society and academia on developing practical “nature footprint” frameworks and methodologies, and integrate nature into decision-making processes, such as permitting and auction processes for renewable energy projects.

3. They can leverage “nature footprint” data to secure targeted financing. Financial institutions are increasingly calling for greater transparency from the real economy on their nature footprints to help channel capital more effectively.

While we may not be able to sum up a nature footprint into one simple metric, as we do for carbon footprints, high-quality data sources and tools, such as ENCORE, SBTN Materiality Tool, WWF Biodiversity and Water Risk Filters, CDP Water Watch, can help businesses uncover their impacts and dependencies on nature.

In particular, analysis of data from ENCORE reveals just how deeply embedded nature is in every sector of the economy.

For example, every sector identified generates toxic soil and water pollutants, solid waste, both GHG and non-GHG air pollutants, and disturbances such as light and noise. Meanwhile, every sector – and our entire society – relies on flood mitigation, soil and sediment retention, water supply, air filtration, and regulation of climate, storms and water flow.

Sectors with the highest impacts and dependencies are fishing, agriculture, forestry, and mining and quarrying – without nature, there would be no food to eat, metals to mine, or energy to light streets and buildings, and producing these goods have an environmental cost.

While analysis tools such as ENCORE can highlight direct impacts and dependencies for a sector, they can miss broader effects across the value chain. Businesses should strive to address both, engaging suppliers to mitigate indirect impacts.

For example, take two different critical sectors for the energy transition: mining and metals and offshore wind. Mining and metals production activities have high direct impacts through pollution, land-use change, ecosystem disturbance, GHG emissions and water. Offshore wind has high direct impacts on ocean and land use change and ecosystem disturbances through the construction of wind farms and their foundations – but its direct impacts on pollution, water and GHG emissions are low.

It’s only when you look at the entire value chain that upstream impacts through the use of steel, copper, aluminium and rare earth metals become more apparent.

The World Economic Forum, in partnership with Business for Nature and WBCSD, has published a series of reports detailing sector actions towards a nature-positive future, applicable to 17 sectors and sub-sectors.

These reports provide guidance for each sector of the economy on identifying their most material impacts and dependencies, as well as five priority actions businesses in each sector can take to transform their operations towards nature-positive goals.

In 2023, the Forum released guidance for cement and concrete, household goods and personal care, and chemicals. Our newest reports, published in collaboration with Oliver Wyman, provide guidance for the mining and metals, automotive, offshore wind and ports sectors, and a specific deep dive into the automotive sector in China.

Information is power: a clear understanding of its unique relationship with nature is a business’ first step to mitigating serious risks, creating additional value, protecting and regenerating crucial resources and ecosystems, and ultimately contributing to the urgent nature-positive goal: halting and reversing nature loss by 2030.