The twin crises of nature loss and climate change demand international cooperation. An interview with Gavin Edwards, Executive Director of the Nature Positive Initiative Secretariat
The Nature Positive Initiative has become a powerful call to action in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. How would you define the core principles of a truly nature-positive economy?
A nature-positive economy is one which is driving the recovery of nature by halting and reversing nature loss. This is also the mission of the Global Biodiversity Framework, agreed by 196 countries in 2022. Nature Positive encapsulates that mission both as a common narrative for nature and as a measurable goal.
Critical to achieving this is a common, credible and practical way to measure whether nature is declining or recovering. When each national government, each local government, each company and each financial institution can demonstrate that it is no longer driving nature loss and is instead contributing to nature gain, then these nature-positive actions that each actor takes become building blocks of a nature-positive global economy.
What are the most critical steps governments and businesses must take today to move from commitments to real impact in halting and reversing biodiversity loss?
The Global Biodiversity Framework lays out 23 Action Targets which, if fully implemented, are designed to achieve its 2030 Mission. Governments can play a critical role for example in Target 3 – setting aside 30% of land, freshwater and seas for conservation through indigenous and community-led management. National and local governments also have a key role to play in Target 1 – ensuring that all land use planning is undertaken for all areas, and that this planning involves local communities, businesses and others. Restoring heavily impacted habitats is also an aim of the GBF, with Target 2 calling for 30% of all degraded ecosystems to be restored globally. In the EU, countries are now developing plans to restore at least 20% of EU land and sea areas by 2030. Embracing the spirit as well as the targets of this UN framework means that each government needs to develop policies and incentives that are ambitious enough to reverse nature loss locally and nationally. By doing so, they will also contribute significantly to mitigating and adapting to a changing climate and to implementing the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate.
Business and financial institutions can and must also play a key role. For example businesses that embrace and use Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosure (TNFD) and Global Reporting Initiative reporting frameworks to disclose their impacts and dependencies on nature, companies who strip from their supply chains products related to deforestation and overfishing, and financial institutions that only invest in infrastructure that contributes to the recovery of nature will all be demonstrating their contribution to securing a nature-positive world.
In your experience, how can the private sector play a more meaningful role in protecting natural ecosystems while continuing to deliver economic value?
None of these goals are possible without the leadership of the private sector. While the food and agriculture sectors have by far the largest impact on nature (estimated at around 70%), other sectors, such as mining, infrastructure, construction and manufacturing, also have a major role to play. In fact the World Economic Forum estimates that more than half of the world’s GDP is moderately or highly dependent on nature. In reality, all companies and all of humanity depend upon the whole of nature for the food we eat, the clothes we wear, for clean water, for fresh air and for shelter.
It is important to think not only of a company’s impacts on nature, but also the opportunities that a nature-positive economy can bring. As different sectors transition towards recovering nature, the Word Economic Forum recently identified $1.4 trillion in such nature-positive business opportunities from just four sectors, including everything from offshore renewables to urban renewal.
For example, ensuring that new development is not located in critical wildlife habitat, and instead makes use of brownfield sites or denuded lands – while also ensuring that the developments contribute to the recovery of nature in adjacent areas – is one of the many ways that companies can leverage economic value while protecting nature.
Many companies struggle to measure and report on nature-related risks and dependencies. What tools or frameworks do you consider most effective in building transparency and accountability?
Companies have until now had a number of tools available to help them, such as eco-certification schemes, a natural capital accounting protocol, environmental standards such as those developed by ISO, and financial disclosure. Despite all these innovations, companies cannot as yet answer the most fundamental of questions: are they contributing to nature’s recovery or nature’s decline?
This question has evaded the private sector in part because of the great challenge in measuring nature – but two key sets of solutions are now emerging.
Firstly, the cost of collecting nature data is dropping rapidly. Nature tech innovations such as remote sensing, which is updated more frequently at lower cost and with ever higher resolution, is in reach. Bio-acoustic listening and eDNA samples can identify whether key species are present in a landscape, and this data can be gathered at a fraction of the cost of traditional field surveys. And AI will in time be able to sift through and make sense of all of this data.
A second solution is also necessary: a common, credible, practical and comparable approach to measuring nature. The Nature Positive Initiative is building a global consensus around a common set of metrics that all actors can use to demonstrate that they are measuring nature in a consistent and comparable way. A draft set of metrics was published in 2024, focusing on ecosystem extent and condition as well as the health of species. The metrics are currently being tested by a range of companies in six business sectors across 32 countries. Following testing, these metrics will then be made widely available for use in 2026 and beyond and also embedded in reporting frameworks.
Whether a company is undertaking disclosure and reporting, investing in development, exploring biodiversity certificates or setting science-based targets for its company-wide sustainability strategy it will need a common, globally-accepted approach to metrics. These set of nature metrics will provide that.
You’ve worked extensively on global campaigns and multilateral agreements. What gives you hope today about the trajectory of international cooperation in addressing ecological crises?
The twin crises of nature loss and climate change are going to lead to more extreme weather events and threaten everything from food security to access to clean water, as well as the decline in wildlife populations. These in turn can bring economic instability, undermine business certainty, contribute to mass migration and drive up the costs of basic goods such as healthy nutritious food.
The solutions to these twin crises all begin with international cooperation, because they cannot be addressed through individual actions alone – collective action is critical. Ignoring this simple fact will only lead to delays in action, slowing of economic development and ultimately a deterioration in our way of life. International cooperation is therefore inevitable, sooner or later.
Gavin Edwards is a conservation and environment advocate with three decades of experience in pursuing and helping secure break-through solutions to the twin biodiversity and climate crises. He has contributed to important conservation successes. He is the Executive Director of the Nature Positive Initiative Secretariat – a collaboration of 27 leading organizations who drive alignment around the definition, integrity and use of the term ‘nature positive’. He holds an Executive MBA from Kellogg-HKUST.
Last Updated on May 19, 2025 by Samir Malki