Guest Post - Nature Positive: The new ‘con’ in conservation is a slogan that will only help businesses, opening the floodgates for a torrent of even more greenwashing
By Simon Counsell
Over the next two weeks, at COP15 in Montreal, the 190+ countries party to the Convention on Biological Diversity will try and agree on the final wording of a new action plan aimed at trying to halt the loss of the world’s biodiversity by 2030 and through to 2050.
The plan, clumsily called the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), has been nearly four years in the making. Hopes are running high that the new plan will mark a sharp reversal of the previous failure to implement the 30-year old convention which, according to most observers, has yet done very little to save the world’s species and genetic diversity.
But in the clamour to be seen to address the ongoing disastrous loss of ecosystems, species, and sub-species, serious plans for action are being replaced with slogans. Firm commitments by governments are being replaced with voluntary corporate measures. Businesses including the large international conservation corporations have been pressing for the overarching mission of the GBF to be a ‘Nature Positive world by 2030’.
If agreed, rather than securing the future of biodiversity, this is likely to be a major step backward in efforts to conserve biodiversity. It could open the floodgates of endless corporate greenwashing. This article explains why.
Biodiversity or Nature?
‘Biodiversity’ is a precisely defined term, and the 1992 Convention on it was legally binding on all signatory nations. But some conservationists don’t much like the word and for years have been pushing instead to use the term ‘nature’. They say people understand better what this means (and of course the two largest global conservation businesses, WWF and The Nature Conservancy include the word in their organisational name).
As has often been the case, an idea that came from the marketing departments of conservation corporations was quickly picked up by wider business interests. In 2021, corporate lobby groups including the World Business Council for Sustainable Development – whose members include some of the most destructive corporations – called on the UN to adopt ‘Global Goal for Nature’ (not biodiversity) with a vision of a “Nature-positive World by 2030”.
The demand for adoption of the outcome of ‘Nature Positive world’ has subsequently been repeated endlessly by major business lobby groups, including Business for Nature (BfN), the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Capitals Coalition. In order to put a vague scientific gloss on the idea, a ‘graph’ purporting to depict the concept has accompanied much of the lobbying.
Nature Positive: Not science-based
The flaws in these demands are clear: “A Nature Positive world” is not a science-based target like keeping climate change to 1.5 degrees. Any target or goal involving the term ‘nature’ – long understood to be a cultural construct rather than a measurable object – places it in the realm of subjectivity, uncertainty and potential abuse. The separation it implies between humans and nature is widely discredited, and alien to many communities (especially Indigenous Peoples) who are recognised as the best guardians of biodiversity.
It begs many questions as to whose nature is being referred to, and what it means in terms of, say, genetic diversity, endangered species, endangered populations, ecosystems, biomes, about whether it refers to qualitatively ‘positive’ or quantitatively ‘positive’, and so on.
It raises the question of what exactly is the vertical axis on the much-used graph shown above. Similar problems bedevil the term ‘nature recovery’ which has also now entered the GBF draft text: recovery to what (or more precisely, to ‘nature’ as it existed at what point in time)? Of what?
Nature Positive’s proponents have evidently been conscious that such obvious questions challenge the notion that this is a ‘science-based’ or credible goal for the GBF. In 2021 WBCSD said that “To avoid the term being diluted, a consistent and credible approach to defining and using the term ‘nature positive’ is required”.
Measuring Nature
In March 2022, its proponents wrote to all the parties negotiating the post- 2020 Global Biodiversity Framework with a statement entitled ‘The Measurable Nature Positive Goal for the CBD Mission’. This claimed that such a goal would be ‘measurable’ by, they said, “quantifying the maintenance and improvement of natural processes, ecosystems and species over time”. The list of such ‘measurable processes’ was long, and extremely wide.
It included for example,
“1. Natural processes: hydrological integrity, sediment transport and the integrity of estuaries, migration patterns, carbon sequestration and storage, integrity of tidal zones, natural fire regimes, and vegetative cover that supports rainfall patterns;
2. Ecosystems; extent of habitat; ecological integrity of the habitat; function of species in their ecosystems . . . ”
This list of things that can supposedly be measured in order to monitor ‘nature positivity’ raises even more questions and problems than it addresses. Some of these ‘measurable processes’ are again highly qualitative (using terms such as ‘integrity’), some are likely to change over time through ‘natural’ processes (such as ‘migration patterns’), some are imprecise to the point of meaninglessness (‘natural fire regimes’, ‘vegetative cover that supports rainfall patterns’), and almost all of them are extremely complex to measure. In other words, the use of such a term would create immense problems and challenges in monitoring, and distract efforts away from the much more precise terms and monitoring systems already agreed under the CBD.
This inevitably raise questions as to why some of the big conservation organisations are pushing something which they know will almost never be measurable and hence will remain meaningless. For them, the term ‘nature positive’ sidesteps the question of whether the vast increase they want in protected areas globally (increased from 17% to 30% of the Earth’s surface), also under the new GBF, will actually achieve anything in terms of protecting biodiversity.
There are serious doubts about this, including among many conservation scientists. But this nearly one-third of the planet will surely contain a lot of ‘nature’, so can be claimed as being ‘nature positive’.
Net zero nature
For its corporate supporters, though, the value of ‘nature positivity’ is clear: it would serve a similar role as ‘net zero’ does on climate. Rather than defining an actual contribution to reducing climate change, ‘net zero’ defines an intention which might be executed through means other than actually reducing emissions, such as buying carbon offsets. Corporate claims to ‘nature positivity’ could involve almost anything involving living organisms, and conceal any amount of damage to actual biodiversity.
As Friends of the Earth International has pointed out, not only is ‘nature’ an undefined term, but ‘positive’ can be very slippery too. Just as ‘net zero’ carbon emissions is not really zero (and allows for any amount of offsets to avoid actual carbon reductions) so ‘nature positive’ could easily be ‘net positive’ – opening the door to destroyers of real biodiversity to simply buy their way out of it with some ‘nature offsets’. Some of the big conservation corporations pushing ‘nature positive’, including the Nature Conservancy, are already collaborating in schemes to ‘verify’ biodiversity ‘offset credits’.
‘Nature positivity’ in fact invites a torrent of corporate greenwashing rather than meaningful science-based action to protect biodiversity. It is the ultimate ‘nature based solution’ – the solution to the problem of how to avoid any accountability for impacts on biodiversity, and instead present ‘contributions to nature’.
Nature positive greenwashing
Examples of egregious ‘nature positive’ greenwashing have already started appearing. In November 2022, WBCSD’s website published a feature on how major forestry corporations were following a ‘roadmap’ to nature positivity. The companies listed include some of the most notorious forest destroyers, such as the Drax Group, International Paper, Mondi, Smurfit Kappa Group, Stora Enso, Sumitomo Forestry and Weyerhaeuser.
Despite these glaring dangers, under the weight of relentless lobbying by businesses and their conservationist allies, the use of ‘nature’ and ‘nature positivity’ has gained a lot of traction in the GBF negotiations. These terms have been included in drafts of the text at the highest levels; all of the currently five alternative versions of the draft Mission of the GBF now contain text related to ‘nature positivity’ or ‘nature recovery’ – despite the lack of any agreed definition of what they actually mean, or how they could be monitored.
In an article entitled ‘Everyone’s going Nature Positive – but what does it mean?’, prominent Oxford University biodiversity scientist Professor Eleanor Milner-Gulland says “I really like the term ‘nature-positive’ and use it a lot”. But she then goes on to explain how there is the danger of “slippage towards ‘nature positive’ encompassing anything a business, government or household can do to be nice to nature.”
“It is starting to feel like any actions that increase biodiversity anywhere, and by any amount, can be called ‘nature positive’. This has to be resisted,” she concludes.
But the past evidence shows clearly that, like a genie, once such an ill-defined and slippery terms is out of the bottle, it is very hard or impossible to rein it back in again (think for example, ‘sustainable development’, ‘multistakeholder’, ‘nature-based solutions’). If included in the forthcoming Global Biodiversity Framework, the ‘nature positive’ genie will be here with us for many years to come, undermining proper implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The best means to “resist” this is simply not to include ‘nature positive’ in the GBF.