As the UN COP15 Biodiversity Conference draws to a close with the UK government committing £29m to support developing countries in delivering the target to protect 30% of land and ocean by 2030, new research reveals more than four in five (83%) business leaders agree that more could be done by business in the future to help biodiversity recover.

This is according to a new report from Ground Control, the biodiversity and land management business, which advocates for united action between all organisations, including business, to protect nature. The report also urges government to include business as part of its recovery strategy, and features research with 2000 business leaders and contributions from leading figures from the worlds of conservation, investment and business.

The difficulty is that individual or personal concern about biodiversity loss does not translate to action from business. While 82% of business leaders say biodiversity is personally very important to them, just 14% have implemented plans to make their land more biodiverse. The challenging economic environment, and the impact from the increased cost of living and energy prices on their business are all barriers for 65% of business leaders to do any more to support biodiversity recovery or climate change in the next 12 months.

At least half of global GDP is moderately or highly dependent on nature, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF), yet business leaders are also less keen to commit to action in the future, despite the fact it could impact their business in the long-term. Just 20% of leaders will commit their business to supporting biodiversity in the future, while 26% have no interest in doing so, showing that more education is needed.

However, 84% of leaders agree that other big businesses have the resources including finance, innovation, people and time, to make a positive impact on biodiversity loss or climate change in the future. Less than a quarter (24%) of businesses are using their resources to take measured action to reduce climate change or build back biodiversity.

There is a clear need for business to do more to protect biodiversity. Over 300 businesses including H&M, Sainsbury’s and Nestle have urged world leaders to mandate that businesses report their impact on nature, at COP15. However the government’s recently launched roadmap to protect nature makes barely any mention of business at all.

In the UK just 53% of our natural wildlife and fauna is left from before the industrial revolution and Britain now sits in the bottom 10 percent of countries globally for biodiversity, according to the Natural History Museum. The wider global picture is not much better. Globally biodiversity now stands at 75% of preindustrial levels, well below the 90% average considered to be the safe limit to maintain important ecological processes vital for human life and the decline of ecosystems costs the global economy an estimated $5 trillion each year in lost natural services.

Despite this, within the last three years the COP15 summit has been delayed three times and has received little to no attention compared to its conferences on sustainability, COP27, seemingly ignorant to biodiversity’s importance to the environment.

Jason Knights, MD of Ground Control said: “Business must play a greater role in tackling biodiversity loss and unite alongside other organisations in the fight to recover nature. We are all equally responsible for tackling the urgent crisis that is biodiversity loss and we cannot separate the responsibility that government, individuals, organisations and businesses have in our communities.

“Government also must do more to include business as part of the solution to biodiversity loss. The collective resources, innovation and budget that sits within business is enormously powerful. Business can – and should – contribute to nature recovery not only because it is part of our collective responsibility to the planet, but also because it makes long-term economic sense to prevent nature’s breakdown.”

Iggy Bassi, Founder & CEO, Cervest added: “It still shocks me how often billion dollar companies have no sense of what’s going to happen to the physical world that their assets operate in. If we can personalise the risks down to the asset level, the proximity of assets to physical hazards and how much value can they lose over time – that’s the quantitative language that business understands.”

What businesses are currently doing to combat climate change or biodiversity loss:
42% are using more sustainable products in production
26% are using more more sustainable methods in their supply chain
50% are reducing their energy consumption
27% are using more renewable energy
14% are making their land more biodiverse through rewilding
12% are investing in biodiversity projects undertaken by third parties
25% are using staff to volunteer in the community on local sustainability projects
23% are undertaking other environmental strategies

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All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 2003 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 3rd – 17th October 2022. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of British business size.

Expert contributions were sourced during an invite-only roundtable dinner in November 2022 convening leading experts from industry at The Wellcome Trust in London.