Nature Positive—What Does It Mean for Australia?

Abstract

The nature positive global goal focuses on the termination and subsequent reversal of biodiversity decline (Locke et al. 2021; Milner-Gulland 2022; Luxton et al. 2024). Organisations, both in Australia and globally, can have negative impacts on biodiversity directly, via their landholdings and operations, or indirectly via complex supply chains (Bull et al. 2018). Supply chain impacts on biodiversity are significant (Irwin and Geschke 2023), but until now have been inadequately considered in conservation and supply chain literature (Gualandris et al. 2024). A new policy target in the Global Biodiversity Framework requires transnational corporations to track, assess and provide full disclosure of their direct and indirect impacts on biodiversity (see Target 15: CBD COP15). There are many measures of biodiversity and ecosystem state and condition that can be considered candidates for understanding business impacts on or benefits for biodiversity (Bull et al. 2018). The most widely used include ‘mean species abundance’ (Hawkins et al. 2023) and ‘potentially disappeared fraction of species’ (PDF) (Damiani et al. 2023; Zhu et al. 2024).

However, unlike tracking net zero carbon targets, nature is both place-based and relational: local and cultural values of species are central and must be considered in business reporting (Pascual et al. 2017). Current methods are unable to capture the multiple dimensions of biodiversity and produce widely applicable and generalisable measures of biodiversity impact (Hawkins et al. 2023; Damiani et al. 2023). It is unclear what measures might be most appropriate for organisations to track their impacts on biodiversity (Burgess et al. 2025), potentially inhibiting organisations from responding to the nature positive framing. A key challenge is determining biodiversity equivalency, across different types of impacts in either value chains or at physical sites, and between activities which either negatively impact or positively benefit biodiversity. Developing a national framework for standardising the process of selecting biodiversity indicators for Australian organisations, against a set of criteria backed by good governance will be a fruitful research activity (Burgess et al. 2025).

Australia has an opportunity to advance biodiversity considerations through this framing and the Federal Government has responded with the development of new policies (DCCEEW 2022; Biodiversity Council 2024). Strong regulatory frameworks will be essential to ensure that businesses provide robust biodiversity disclosures (Mair et al. 2024). Organisational responses to biodiversity impacts are very new, compared to other aspects of sustainability reporting such as carbon or energy disclosures (zu Ermgassen et al. 2022). The use of biodiversity credits and ‘green’ financial instruments is being considered (Luxton et al. 2024); however, caution is critical given the failings of carbon markets (Asadnabizadeh and Moe 2024). There is potential for the nature positive movement to generate greenwashing if companies promote conservation initiatives superficially (Maron et al. 2023; Mair et al. 2024). Organisations planning to respond to their impacts must follow the impact mitigation hierarchy and focus on tangible environmental restoration actions to compensate for impacts (Maron et al. 2023). New knowledge regarding organisational goals, motivations and values across multiple scales (i.e., individual, institutional, societal and global) is also needed to design appropriate nature positive response pathways (Booth et al. 2024). A critical component in Australia is the centring of Indigenous people's knowledge in policies and response planning, to ensure an inclusive, people and nature positive future (Obura et al. 2023; Biodiversity Council 2024).

Dale R. Wright: conceptualization, project administration, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing. Brendan A. Wintle: conceptualization, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing. Matthew J. Selinske: conceptualization, writing – review and editing. Sarah A. Bekessy: conceptualization, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing.

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.