Defining your Nature Commitment

Creating your business’ sustainability policy doesn’t need to be a daunting prospect. And once you have one, it can be an invaluable reference to help you make strategically-focused operational decisions and communicate your commitments to staff and clients.

But to get the full benefit, your policy commitment needs to be more than just a vision or ‘statement of purpose’. It needs to demonstrate an understanding of your operational impacts, and what realistic and effective actions the business will take to address them.

What to include

When I set about crafting a sustainability policy, or as I prefer to say, a ‘nature positive commitment’, for a business (one of ANIMONDIAL’s most popular services) I focus on three fundamental areas:

• Core principles – what guides the business brand, activities and approach,
• Policy objectives – what are the desired outcomes, which standards or targets define them, and how will they be achieved, and
• Red lines – details of any critical issues or ‘no-go’ areas for the business.

This applies to any business commitment, from applying animal welfare safeguards through the supply chain to consolidating existing sustainability measures within one strategic plan.

Sustainable vs Nature Positive

While these terms mean similar things, it is worth understanding the differences. Sustainability has a focus on minimising damage to nature and depletion of natural resources, typically by working at an issue-by-issue level. The nature positive perspective encompasses this, but focuses on the organisation’s overall impact on nature – including the full range of issues and both positive and negative impacts – and strives for a net positive outcome. ANIMONDIAL always advocates a nature positive approach (as in the case of Nature Positive Tourism) to provide a coherent context for sustainability actions, realistic prioritisation, meaningful outcomes and the ambition to not just sustain nature as it is but restore it to a richer, stronger state.

Ultimately the overriding objective of such a policy is to safeguard the business and its operations to ensure future resilience. This involves identifying material dependencies and operational impacts, identifying ways to manage, reduce or avoid any impacts that undermine the dependencies, and seeking viable opportunities that compensate for any remaining impacts. As nature continues to degrade and decline, undertaking a robust materiality assessment becomes more and more essential.

To identify your business’ nature dependencies and impacts, risks and opportunities, check out our previous blogs providing step-by-step practical guidance on each topic.

How to realise your nature positive commitment

As with any business objective, you will need a strategic plan to ensure that the policy is:

• Applied systematically, with key actions integrated throughout the business and supply chain,
• Actioned through science-based targets, each set against a defined timeline,
• Structured with clearly defined roles and responsibilities to deliver each action,
• Supported and enabled by senior leadership, and
• Provided with sufficient funding and resources to do the job well.

Certainly one of the most common oversights in sustainability planning, that I have experienced, is resource allocation. This includes both insufficient personnel to effectively manage, monitor and disclose business sustainability actions, and inadequate finances to achieve the objectives. Considering that a robust sustainability or nature plan should be fundamental to securing future business resilience in an increasingly unpredictable natural world, it is surprising that so few businesses are prioritising sustainability or pursuing a nature positive approach.

How to implement your plan

To effectively integrate and implement your plan, and to secure peer and investor support and client endorsement, you will need to engage all functions of the business, including:

• Marketing, sales and communications,
• Product and purchasing,
• Customer-facing services, and
• Partners and suppliers.

So, your nature plan could, for example, set out how you intend to engage and assess your suppliers, inform and empower your customers, and deliver strategic actions through stakeholder partnerships. Collaborations with likeminded organisations, particularly in critical value-chain locations (such as destinations, in the case of the tourism sector) will also enable you to access local knowledge and enhance the overall outcome.

How to disclose your action outcomes

The UN Biodiversity Plan (2022) places a responsibility on businesses to:

• Fully integrate biodiversity safeguards and values into policies, regulations, planning and development processes,
• Transparently disclose their nature risks, dependencies and impacts,
• Provide information to help consumers make sustainable consumption choices, and
• Report on compliance with regulations and other measures.

These actions will enable businesses to progressively reduce their negative impacts on biodiversity, increase their positive impacts, reduce their biodiversity-related risks, and enable sustainable patterns of production and consumption. Find more guidance on these business requirements below.

Steps to success

Whether you are creating your nature plan to align various sustainability initiatives or setting out to apply a comprehensive nature positive approach, follow these steps to enable an effective delivery:

• Undertake a double materiality assessment – this will identify your business’ nature dependencies and operational impacts on biodiversity.
• Consider the locations of operations and value chain activities and how the business may affect the state of nature there.
• Develop science-based targets or priority actions to reduce or avoid your material risks (identified from your dependencies & impacts) and define your overall objectives.
• Create your business commitment and how it will be implemented through both direct and indirect operations, including which departments will need to be involved and how to engage and onboard your suppliers.
• Identify opportunities to build back biodiversity and where it is needed most. Consider opportunities for collaboration to enhance actions to regenerate nature.

Daniel Turner, Director of Strategy

Find Out More …

• Check out the Business for Nature ‘Sector Actions’ for insights into your specific nature-related dependencies and impacts, and risks and opportunities – in particular the ‘Travel & Tourism’ guide, prepared by Daniel.
• Learn about the Nature Positive Travel & Tourism initiative.
• For a thorough understanding of your business’ nature dependencies, impacts and risks, take our NATOUR IMPACT online assessment. We will walk you through the process and provide you with a detailed report including practical next steps.
• See how we can help you develop and implement your nature commitment, or take a look at our full range of services.