Tag Archive for: nature positive

Webinar: Introducing the Nature-Based Enterprise

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BFBI is delighted to announce an introductory webinar on new market opportunities in nature-based solutions.

This webinar is organised in collaboration with the Connecting Nature Enterprise Platform which brings together communities of nature-based enterprises, working with and for nature. These businesses are experiencing high market demand as they deliver nature-based solutions which help to address business dependencies and risks from nature loss and climate change. 

Whether you are interested in benefiting from nature-based solutions to climate adaptation, developing new products and services, you are a start-up business in this area, or you will have businesses like these in your supply chain, this webinar provides a good understanding of how your business can participate in the nature positive economy and go nature positive! 

Webinar date: August 20th, 2025
Time: 12-1pm
Via Teams: Register HERE

Our speaker: Isobel Fletcher is CEO of Horizon Nua, a not-for-profit foundation based in Dublin working to accelerate the just transition towards a nature-positive economy and manager of the Connecting Nature Enterprise Platform. An advocate for nature-based entrepreneurship, Isobel leads the team working to co-develop nature-positive entrepreneurial strategies at regional and municipal level through multiple European initiatives to support the delivery of nature-based solutions as part of the just transition to an equitable, carbon neutral and nature-positive economy. Isobel is a member of the EC NbS Task forces on the nature-positive economy and communications. 

 

Participate in ‘The Business of Nature Positive’ at Trinity

Would you like to participate in The Business of Nature Positive?

BFBI Business Programme Lead, Dr Catherine Farrell CIEEM is an Assistant Professor of Business & Nature at Trinity College Dublin. This past academic year in Trinity Business School, she and a group of students engaged with businesses from a broad range of sectors in Ireland for a new module, The Business of Nature Positive.

From SME to major legal firms, to real estate to aviation, 34 students worked with 15 businesses to build understanding of their impacts and dependencies on nature, and how they can address nature-related risks, as well as explore opportunities through nature-positive actions. You can read more about the module, which is supported by the Business for Biodiversity Ireland team, here, and sign up after reading the full Expression of Interest document below.

Here are some of the testimonials from the Sustainability Champion Leads that engaged with us this year to inspire you to participate – whether your business is just one person / a small team or large scale, size does not matter:

Engaging with the students through the course was valuable to us as it provided an impetus to tackle the real challenges we must overcome. Coming from outside our domain was also useful as they were able to provide a different perspective. – Jane, Trinity College Dublin.

 

This was a really rewarding experience. The module was run very professionally and the students’ level of engagement exceeded expectations, as did the output which will be very complimentary to our sustainability strategy around biodiversity. – Neil, Hibernia Real Estate.

 

Working with our students helped put our efforts and plans into perspective… Their ideas to expand nature-positive businesses – especially their most simple ideas – have inspired. – Patrick, Notre Dame Dublin.

 

I would definitely encourage any business to get involved, the students have so much knowledge and come with lots of ideas about embedding sustainability. The end report is written specifically for your organisation which was insightful and well written. Overall, a great experience and hopefully the students thought it was useful too! – Dee, Chartered Accountants Ireland.

 

A very positive experience, as the students were really engaged and interested. I think they learned a lot from this initiative, as did we! – Megan, Native Events.

 

It has been a great pleasure working with the students and collaborating with Dr Catherine Farrell. Viewing our business from a different perspective has been incredibly valuable. We hope The Shannon Airport Group can continue to collaborate with Trinity College in the future. – Arek, The Shannon Airport Group.

 

It was a pleasure to work with the students of the Business of Nature Positive module at Trinity Business School under the guidance of Dr Catherine Farrell. The programme provided me with hands-on practical experience … and the resulting report will be a very useful tool in our biodiversity strategy for the future. For businesses that have not yet started evaluating their biodiversity-related impacts, risks and opportunities this is a valuable programme and one I can highly recommend. – Lorraine, A&L Goodbody.

The call for businesses to engage with this year’s student (academic year 2025-2026) is now open – an opportunity for you to learn more about sustainability reporting for your business – read the Expression of Interest PDF linked below with full details of what’s involved below and sign up HERE.

Poster in dark red with white text and logos

Expression of Interest: TBS Nature positive module 4_6_2025

Guest blog: Bridging the Biodiversity Financing Gap

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Dr Catherine Farrell, Assistant Professor in Business and Nature in Trinity Business School and BFBI’s Business Programme Lead, is co-ordinator of a module for final year business students with learnings on nature, society and economy. The module, the development of which was supported by BFBI, is called The Business of Nature Positive and explores ways for undergraduate students to work with businesses in Ireland to support the global Nature Positive Initiative. We are delighted to share guest articles on a number of associated course topics, beginning with the role of green bonds in sustainable finance.  

In this extract, Ms. Meadbh O’Mahony, Senior Sophister student in Global Business in Trinity Business School, explores why these bonds are insufficient on their own to halt biodiversity decline; while highlighting the important role they must play a nature-positive future: 

 

Bridging the Biodiversity Financing Gap: Why Green Bonds Are Not Enough 

‘The planet’s rich web of life is unravelling, with ecosystems deteriorating at an alarming pace due to human-driven pressures. The UN’s Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) reports that 75% of terrestrial environments and 66% of marine ecosystems have been significantly altered by human actions, driven by deforestation, pollution, climate change and unsustainable resource extraction (Natixis, 2024). 

Graph with pink and green hues

The World Economic Forum estimates that $44 trillion, over half of global GDP, is moderately or highly dependent on nature. (Deutz A, et al, 2020). Despite the urgency of the crisis, current biodiversity financing falls far short of what is needed to reverse ecosystem degradation.

Despite significant progress being made in climate and sustainable finance, with green bonds channelling nearly $600 billion into environmental projects in 2023 alone (Popoola et al. 2024), they have largely focused on climate mitigation projects, such as renewable energy and carbon reduction and overlooked biodiversity. 

In response to this imbalance, the financial industry is evolving beyond traditional green bonds and to a new generation of financial instruments, biodiversity bonds…’

Read the full article here: Bridging the Biodiversity Financing Gap – Meadbh O’Mahony 

 

Strategy: Developing a Nature Ambition Statement

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BFBI Business Programme Lead Dr Catherine Farrell CIEEM, Trinity College Dublin, who presented at our recent Stategy Track workshop in Dublin, recaps on the benefits of developing a Nature Ambition Statement to help guide your nature strategy.

It’s is the perfect time to set targets for the coming year. And so, in the spirit of setting a steady nature-positive pace, the team at Business for Biodiversity Ireland, with help from the Sustainable Futures team at KPMG Ireland, kicked off 2025 with an insightful January workshop for our Strategy Track businesses.

Our focus was on the key elements of what a Nature Ambition Statement is – and why every organisation should have one. BFBI, in partnership with Business for Nature, is hosting the It’s Now for Nature Accelerator programme to empower Irish businesses to develop and publish a credible nature strategy.

Step 1: So, you’ve done your basic value-chain mapping, you’ve identified your main impacts and dependencies, and you’ve found that biodiversity is a material topic for your business to include in annual reporting. In the process, you’ve highlighted key areas to focus on, and you have a sense of what you can achieve. Maybe you also discovered areas that your employees or customers want you to focus on. But you need a North Star to guide your next steps. That is what your Nature Ambition Statement is.

There are some good examples available to learn from, such as the ambition statement developed by Foresight Group, and Business for Nature has provided some good guidance around elements that should be included – such as, how your ambition aligns with the Global Biodiversity Framework targets and timelines for delivery. 

Step 2: The ambition, set out in Step 1, can only be achieved if it is supported by setting targets that can be realised. We need to be thinking about targets that are SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound; being clear on what is achievable and within what timeframes. This will be the focus of our next two Strategy Track business workshops coming up later in the year.

In a nutshell, a Nature Ambition Statement sets the coordinates for where your business needs to, and importantly, wants to, go for nature. It can be used to help guide the target-setting process within the company but it also sends a clear, action-oriented message to your customers and key stakeholders. The process itself – agreeing and refining the business’ nature ambition – could also be described as the first step in business transformation.

The next step is getting clear on what the business can do, and what it is ready to commit to, towards a nature-positive future. More on this to come in our next workshop in April.

Our Strategy Track includes pilot BFBI businesses who have been progressing their organisation’s Nature Strategy and sharing feedback along the way, including An Post, Bank of Ireland, Bus Eireann, Cairn Homes, ESB Networks, Gas Networks Ireland, Glenveagh Properties, KPMG Ireland’s Sustainable Futures, SAP Landscapes and our associates at Business in The Community Ireland, Biodiversity Data Centre and Trinity College Dublin.

  • To take the first step on the BFBI 4-Track Nature Strategy Accelerator Programme, your organisation can sign up for our free Discovery Track. Once you have a good handle on what’s needed for your business to begin to take action, you can sign-up to progress along the paid Action Track, then the next step will be the Strategy Track.

Read more here – How It All Works.

Wanted: Participants for Trinity ‘Business of Nature Positive’

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Want a deeper understanding of your business’ impacts and dependencies on nature? Wondering where to start with nature-related disclosures? Lost in a fog of TNFD / GRI / EFRAG / CRSD alphabet soup? Keen to develop a roadmap to Nature Positive for your business but don’t know where to start?

Business For Biodiversity Ireland is participating in the development of a new module with Trinity College Dublin’s Dr Catherine Farrell titled ‘The Business of Nature Positive’ and are inviting businesses who would be interested and willing to:

  • participate in Trinity Business School undergraduate / student-led research to trial the application of nature-related reporting frameworks and tools, and
  • explore ways to develop a roadmap to Nature Positive.

Businesses rely on many aspects of nature and climate to carry out day-to-day business. Recognising these dependencies, as well as the impacts of business on nature, new reporting requirements under the new EU Corporate Social and Responsibility Directive (CSRD), will fast become a reality for Irish businesses.

In response to the need to build capacity for present and future business needs, Trinity Business School is developing this module to be delivered to 4th year undergraduates in the 2024/2025 academic year and facilitate learning in how to apply and communicate relevant nature-related reporting and disclosure frameworks for businesses, helping to identify steps to nature positive and through these processes assist businesses to integrate nature into decision making.

We expect the input from the business to be by a nominated staff member / sustainability business champion working directly with the TCD students. We expect the work to involve at minimum approximately 8-10 hours in total over a period of 4 months (largely between December and mid-April 2025 – download a breakdown of time and commitment expected via the PDF at the end of the article.)

As a participating business, through engagement in this process, you will have opportunities to:

  • Benefit by receiving bespoke support in kickstarting scoping for a materiality assessment for your business
  • Assistance in taking the first steps in identifying data available / potential data needs for nature related reporting
  • Develop a deeper understanding of your business’ impacts and dependencies on nature,
  • Begin the thought process as to how to develop a roadmap for nature positive for your
    business, and
  • Trial approaches / identify opportunities for communicating nature related issues to
    stakeholders (internal and external).

Once we have an overview of interested businesses (small or large, of any sector), the module coordinator will follow up with a questionnaire to determine your suitability in terms of logistics and availability.

NB: Please submit an expression of interest form HERE.

This call for Expressions of Interest will close in early July.

 

EOI-TBS-Nature-positive-module-final-27_5_2024Download

BFBI joins the Nature Positive Forum

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Business For Biodiversity Ireland is pleased to announce that we are joining the Nature Positive Forum.

We are committed to helping secure a nature-positive world – one where there is more biodiversity in 2030 than there was compared to the 2020 baseline – no mean feat considering the rate at which our biodiversity is being degraded and destroyed by human activity and its effect on climate change.

The purpose of the Nature Positive Initiative is to stimulate and support the world in addressing the accelerating biodiversity crisis by meeting the crucial goal of “halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030 from a 2020 baseline and to set the path for full recovery of nature by 2050″. 

The purpose of the Nature Positive Forum is to mobilise a global community, and is open to all relevant institutions, organisations and companies who:

● Commit to upholding the “Global Goal for Nature – Nature Positive“.

● Actively contribute to the Initiative’s goal and objectives in their own activities, and
contribute to and promote its guidance and positions

Read more about Nature Positive Initiative here.
Find out about the Nature Positive Forum here.

Nature Disclosures: Set the Right Foundations

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Our Roadmap to Nature Positive will help you set the right foundations for reporting your nature-related impacts and dependencies under new regulations – it’s also useful if you are considering reporting these voluntarily.

Regardless of current legal obligations, there is a responsibility for all organisations, no matter their size, to understand their impacts and dependencies on nature and take measures to halt and reverse these. Business as usual is not an option, given the decline in global biodiversity and the interlinked climate crisis, the effects of which are already being felt on human health and society, as well as economically. 

First off, you need to know your obligations on nature disclosures. Within the Roadmap – available to BFBI members when you sign up and log in to the Members Area of our site – we look at reporting for different business types and scales. We also outline the relationship between EU Taxonomy and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).

Goal 3 provides information on your legal obligations, in particular if your business falls under the scope of CSRD; and if/when your business needs to start reporting. There is a different timeline for companies of various scales, starting in 2024 for certain companies. For businesses that do not currently fall under the scope of CSRD, we outline how it may relate to your business down the line.

Considering the value chain

Many businesses that are not within the scope of CSRD are still part of the value chain (aka Scope 3) of larger organisations. These larger organisations may well request Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) information from their value chain members – and organisations who are not ready for this may find that they lose out when it comes to larger organisations making supplier choices.

Once you know your obligations under the new regulations, the next step will be to explore the reporting standards to find the best fit for your business. Members can check out our Guidance A3.2 on Standardising Reports. Standardised reporting helps organisations increase transparency and communicate their sustainability initiatives.

We’ll give you an overview of the reporting standards that are internationally recognised and aligned with each other with explainers on how all the emerging different policies, frameworks and standards are linked.

Already feeling the overwhelm? Take a breath and have a look at our easy-to-read member guidance documents to give yourself a basic understanding. You’re not expected to be an expert right away and the Platform is here to help. If you have questions, all members are invited to our quarterly Member’s Forum, and you can upload your questions or comments to the online dashboard so that we can discuss them at our meet-ups.

Register here: https://businessforbiodiversity.ie/register-all/

Nature Positive Roadmap: Ask the right questions

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Business for Biodiversity Ireland offers our members an easy-to-follow Roadmap to Nature Positive –  the Assess Phase covers getting started by making a commitment – and another key step is working out where your business stands within a sectoral and organisational context in order to create a solid biodiversity strategy. To do this, you need to know how to ask the right questions.

BFBI members can access our Business Template which will help map out your business model in terms of inputs, activities and outputs. It has been compiled with our community of practice businesses and cross-referenced with prevailing methodology and standards, such as the Global Reporting Initiative and the TNFD LEAP approach.

The Global Reporting Initiative is an independent, international organisation that provides a global common language to communicate environmental impacts with a suite of standards to help businesses report on various aspects of sustainability across regulatory landscapes.

The BFBI Business Template helps unpack your business model with a series of guiding questions, for example:

– What sector are you active within?
– What type of activities are carried out by your business?
– Where are your activities based geographically?

The template goes on to cover your raw materials, your procurement, your land footprint, your water footprint – with recommended tools to calculate these – as well as, you guessed it, your carbon footprint.

Creating a value-chain map

Then you’ll look through your business and value-chain relationships, with more guiding questions, giving you an opportunity to create a value-chain map. Every business has a value chain – you need to also consider what types of activities are undertaken by those with which you have business relationships?

Think about your sector and theirs – what are the nature challenges at local, regional, and global levels related both to your sector and to that of organisations in your value chain: e.g. deforestation, climate change, water stress, pollution, land use, invasive species, natural resource use?

What are the responsibilities with regards to compliance and regulation? These steps on the Roadmap will allow you to create high-level overviews to identify topics material to your business when it comes to new and existing reporting regulations.

This process must be revisited regularly and in consultation with stakeholders and industry experts. The policy landscape is evolving, reflecting the urgency to take action to mitigate risk from the connected biodiversity loss and climate change crises. It is therefore important to be aware of any policy changes that relate to your business, sector and value chain.

The BFBI platform will be on hand with updates – become a member here to access our full Roadmap to Nature Positive.

Next up: Nature Disclosures – knowing your reporting obligations & choosing the right framework

Call for Community of Practice partners: Energy

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Call for partners! We are excited to announce our first sector-specific community of practice focused on transitioning Ireland’s energy sector to a nature-positive future.

Since we started work on the Business For Biodiversity Ireland platform, we have identified the need to convene and facilitate meaningful conversations at sector level. We initially formed a multi-sector community of practice so we could explore the prevailing frameworks with a variety of businesses in the Irish context. The next phase of this work is the development of sector-specific communities of practice (SSCoP), starting by bringing together stakeholders in the energy sector.

Why energy?
The energy sector is a high-impact sector, has varied and significant impacts on the natural world and these impacts present risks to businesses and the economy. Equally, this sector has massive potential to activate positive impacts on biodiversity.

Understanding the energy sector’s impacts and dependencies on nature will help inform biodiversity strategies into the future. As well as direct operations, value chain impacts must be fully explored so that nature can be included in business decision-making.

The aim of these discussion- and action-focussed SSCoPs is to convene all actors and stakeholders within a sector and collectively forge a path forward to a nature positive future and will comprise private and semi-state organisations, experts, researchers and academics.

We encourage all partners within the SSCoPs to share their own experiences and knowledge freely, innovate new solutions and work together to help define best practice in an Irish context, taking positive steps towards systemic change within their sector.

Transitioning to a nature-positive mode of operating will be a gradual process that will be in a near constant state of evolution. The SSCoP will convene in-person, three times per year. At the end of each annual cycle, we will produce a set of guidelines for the sector. 

We believe that collective thinking and collective action will produce the most successful outcomes for people, nature and climate.

You can find out more about the commitment and apply here – Nature Positive Energy Community of Practice – https://businessforbiodiversity.ie/energy-sscop/

Nature Positive Roadmap – Step 2: Make a Commitment

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Business for Biodiversity Ireland offer our members an easy-to-follow Roadmap to Nature Positive – and the second step of Phase 1: Assess, after getting started, is to make a commitment to champion and support the objectives of the international Convention on Biological Diversity. Read more below…

Business For Biodiversity Ireland invites all our businesses to sign our Biodiversity Commitment. This comes after reviewing resources to expand your knowledge in the area of biodiversity loss and becoming familiar with the concept of Nature Positive, which is currently being defined and examined by the Nature Positive Initiative, a collective of the world’s largest nature organisations, business and finance coalitions.

Nature positive is a term that defines the actions and activities of a business that reduce negative impacts on nature across their operations and value chain, with concurrent business activities that redirect resources and financial investments towards the restoration and protection of nature.

Click to learn more about Nature Positive.

The Irish government declared a biodiversity emergency in 2019. According to the National Biodiversity Action Plan 2023-2030, all sectors of society including the private sector have a responsibility for nature’s conservation, to protect and restore ecosystems and the services they provide. Nature-positive business models are inherently more resilient to the impacts of climate change, create diverse employment opportunities and encourage innovative approaches to value-chain management.

The BFBI Biodiversity Commitment pledges to champion and support, by all means possible, the three urgent objectives of the international Convention on Biological Diversity: 

  • Conservation of biological diversity and ecosystem services 
  • Sustainable use of its components 
  • Fair and equitable sharing of the benefits that arise out of the utilisation of resources 

This includes a commitment to analyse and monitor your business activities to understand both your direct impacts on nature and your direct dependencies on nature and the associated risks, including defining biodiversity loss as a business risk, incorporating it into your company risk management portfolio.

It is also necessary to commit to understanding the impacts within your value chain and use this information to incorporate nature into decision-making. This includes encouraging your suppliers to make a similar commitment to strive for a nature positive future.

Read the full Biodiversity Commitment HERE.

Become a BFBI member HERE.

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