Tag Archive for: Trinity College Dublin

Wanted: Businesses for Nature Positive module, TCD

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Calling Irish businesses – would you like to participate in the groundbreaking Business of Nature Positive module at Trinity College Dublin and get support in developing a nature strategy for your organisation?

BFBI is delighted to continue to work with Dr Catherine Farrell, our Business Programme Advisor and Assistant Professor in Business and Nature in Trinity Business School on the module. In their final year, students work through nature reporting frameworks with businesses to help identify opportunities and risks linked to dependencies and impacts on nature and ecosystem services. Previous participants include BFBI members An Post, Gas Networks Ireland, Dublin Airport Authority, Iarnród Éireann Irish Rail, Scott Cawley Ltd and Watermark Coffee | B Corp – and all Irish businesses are welcome to apply.

If you would like to be one of the businesses that gets to work with talented Trinity College Dublin students in academic year 2026/2027 – just drop Dr Farrell a message at farrec23@tcd.ie or complete the application survey here.

Catherine writes: “Looking back to when I started this journey two years ago, bringing Nature into Trinity Business School, I really couldn’t have imagined how much I would have learned from students and the businesses that engaged with us, and hopefully vice versa. Let me give you an overview of how it works.

We start with a gentle introductory session on ‘what is nature‘ and ‘why nature matters for us‘. Simple questions right? Then ‘who looks after nature‘ and ‘who is accountable for nature‘. You can imagine how tricky things can get there – often the questions in the class room focus on aren’t we all responsible for looking after nature – it’s our home right? Yes. We all depend on nature for the air we breathe, the water we drink (we do have to clean that first of course), and the food we eat. These are our dependencies on nature.

But when we use nature, we also impact on nature. Building on this basic 101 Nature knowledge: all businesses depend on nature in some way, for some the relationship is more explicit. But for ALL businesses, understanding nature dependencies is critical. Only through evidence can we anticipate potential risks and opportunities that we can leverage to help a) reduce our impacts and dependencies, and b) find positive ways of living with / doing business with nature (dear reader: remember that we are living in the climate and biodiversity crises era so transforming business for good is required!).

Once the students get their head around dependencies and impacts, risks and opportunities (think DIROs), we get into the (inspiring) array of reporting frameworks that are emerging. Businesses can use frameworks like CSRD and TNFD to help organise their information (for use in a more standardised approach to reporting) on nature.

Once November hits we start working with real-world businesses and a big shout out to the companies that worked with our students this year – and indeed, more so to the champions in each business who gave their valuable time to engage with a great group of students. Our businesses in 2025 / 2026 were: An Post, Gas Networks Ireland, Dublin Airport Authority, Irish Rail, Ballinahinna Farm Ltd. (a dairy farm in Co. Cork), STABLE of Ireland, Chartered Accountants Ireland, IPB Insurance, Powerscourt Estate, Watermark Coffee, Barrys Tea and Scott Cawley Ltd.

You can read about last year’s businesses here – but here’s some inspirational quotes from a few of the 12 businesses we worked with in 2025/2026 –

Excellent communication and feedback from students helping develop our business in this area. Thomas, Ballinahinna Farm.

Working with the students was a fantastic experience. Their in-depth review of where we were as a business in terms of nature and biodiversity was really inciteful and provided great input for us to continue on that journey. I would highly recommend any business to get involved. Dee, Chartered Accountants Ireland

The students demonstrated a good understanding of An Post’s business and provided considered, relevant insights, adapting their approach based on our position. The engagement was flexible, and the outputs were strong relative to the level of time and commitment involved. It is a valuable opportunity for organisations looking to develop or inform their biodiversity strategy. Alex, An Post

A last word of thanks to the students of the class of 2026 – and remember, always make space for nature in the boardroom. There wouldn’t be a boardroom without it.’

If you would like to be one of the businesses that gets to work with talented Trinity College Dublin students in academic year 2026/2027 – just drop Dr Farrell a message at farrec23@tcd.ie or complete the application survey here.

Full Speed Ahead for a Nature-Positive Roadmap

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BFBI is delighted to host a guest article by Adam Condon, a student of The Business of Nature Positive module at Trinity College Dublin – an exploration of more sustainable options to address the nature-related impacts of waste generation from energy products after marathon events.

A Nature-Positive Roadmap for Sports Nutrition:

Finish Line Fallacy

Three weeks after last October’s Dublin Marathon, I was walking my dog along the road when he nosed something silver out of the hedgerow. A crumpled energy gel wrapper, still sticky with maltodextrin, I grabbed out of his mouth. We hadn’t walked fifty metres before he found another. Then another. The race was long over. The waste was not.

The maths here is grim but worth doing. Around 25,000 runners line up each year, and most marathon fuelling plans call for roughly ten gels across the 42 kilometres. That is potentially up to 250,000 single-use wrappers dropped in a single morning across Dublin’s roads, parks, and canals. And that only counts race day. Factor in the training block, months of weekend long runs through the Phoenix Park, along the city centre, out past UCD, and the real number climbs far higher. Silver sticky wrappers sit in hedgerows, parks, and gardens, from July to October, waiting for the dogs, foxes, and wildlife that smell food and pull them loose.

These wrappers cannot be recycled. They are multi-material laminates, meaning, plastic film fused to aluminium foil, and no recycling site in the country will take them (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2016). Because they can’t be recycled, over time they fragment into microplastics that leach into soil and waterways, entering food chains and degrading the Dublin biodiversity we are trying to restore (UNEP, 2021). For a sport built on being outdoors, that is a genuinely sticky irony.

A Product That Depletes Nature Twice

The litter we can see is only half the problem. This product depletes nature twice: once when it is made, and again when it is tossed. Working through the sports nutrition value chain, I was shocked by how deep the upstream damage runs. The fuel inside most gels, maltodextrin, comes from intensive corn or wheat monocultures. These systems strip soil and organic matter, lean on synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, and generate nutrient runoff that leads to algal blooms and aquatic dead zones far from the farm (Tilman et al., 2002). The wrapper is worse. Its aluminium foil lining starts life as bauxite ore, extracted through open-pit mining that tears through tropical forests and leaves behind toxic red mud lagoons in place of thriving ecosystems (Power, Gräfe and Klauber, 2011).

Through a double materiality lens, gel brands carry nature-related risk at both ends of their value chain. Upstream, they depend on degraded ecosystems for raw materials. Downstream, the product waste directly harms local biodiversity. Under the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), companies are increasingly expected to disclose exactly these kinds of impacts and dependencies (EFRAG, 2024). Sports nutrition brands that ignore this two-way exposure are on borrowed time.

The “Design to Fail” Business Model

The current model is to sell-and-forget. Brands take high margins on the fuel and knowingly push the cost of the wrapper onto local councils and nature itself. The packaging design, at best, assumes that an exhausted runner, sticky-handed, oxygen-deprived, and kilometres from the nearest bin, will somehow hold onto multiple torn empty wrappers until they find one. That is not a realistic assumption. It is a product designed to fail.

The EU’s incoming Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) turns this into a direct financial liability (European Commission, 2022). The PPWR introduces recyclability requirements, minimum recycled content thresholds, and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) obligations rooted in the Polluter Pays principle. Brands still selling non-recyclable laminate packaging will face rising EPR levies, potential market restrictions, and inevitable reputational damage across the single market. The only question left is whether companies treat incoming regulation as a grudging cost or as impetus to improve their entire product.

“If You Sell the Fuel, Own the Wrapper”

A Nature Positive Roadmap

Nature Positive is not a slogan. The Nature Positive Initiative (2024) defines it as an ambitious goal referring to measurable outcomes that contribute to halting and reversing nature loss. In terms of sports nutrition, that means moving up the Mitigation Hierarchy. Instead of limiting damage at the end, we avoid the impact entirely through redesign, then actively restore the ecosystems the product touches along the way. The principle I propose is simple: if you sell the fuel, own the wrapper.

On the packaging side, viable alternatives already exist through emerging nature-based enterprises (NBEs). Notpla, a London-based startup, produces seaweed-based packaging that dissolves harmlessly in soil and water, captures and stores carbon in its structure during growth, and requires no arable land or freshwater to produce (Notpla, 2024). By addressing both climate change and biodiversity loss simultaneously, it offers a scalable solution to the polycrisis we face. They have already trialled it at the London Marathon. Picture a gel wrapper that, if dropped by a wrecked runner at mile twenty, breaks down into organic matter within weeks. The downstream biodiversity threat disappears.

On the ingredient side, brands can shift their maltodextrin sourcing towards regenerative agriculture systems that rebuild soil health, increase water retention, and restore microbial diversity (Rodale Institute, 2020). This turns the upstream crisis on its head: a nature-depleting input becomes a nature-restoring one. Major food companies are already investing in regenerative sourcing programmes. The sports nutrition sector has no excuse not to follow.

Runners care about the outdoors. They rely on the cultural ecosystem services, the recreation, amenity, and well-being values, provided by places like the Phoenix Park and the Grand Canal. A brand that delivers  the first genuinely Nature Positive gel, compostable wrapper, regeneratively sourced fuel, does not just avoid a compliance headache. It earns lasting loyalty from a community that can spot greenwashing a mile off. Research consistently shows endurance athletes are willing to pay a premium for sustainably packaged products (Trivium Packaging, 2023). An extra fifty cents per gel to protect the route you love running is not a hard sell.

Fuel the Runner, Not the Route

The sports nutrition industry has a choice ahead of it. One path leads to rising EPR fees, regulatory scrambling, and more silver gel wrappers piling up in Ireland’s hedgerows. The other leads to material innovation, restored supply chains, and brand storytelling that stands out more than any ad campaign.

Event organisers can help force this change. The Dublin Marathon and other mass-participation races should mandate compostable packaging for all sponsored nutrition products by 2028. If your brand wants endorsement, its wrapper should not end up in the Grand Canal.

The finish line is not the end of a product’s lifecycle. It is where accountability starts. If you fuel the runner sustainably, runners will buy the fuel.

References:
EFRAG (2024) EFRAG IG 1: Materiality Assessment Implementation Guidance. Brussels: European Financial Reporting Advisory Group.
Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2016) The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the Future of Plastics. World Economic Forum.
European Commission (2022) Proposal for a Regulation on Packaging and Packaging Waste, COM(2022) 677 final. Brussels.
Nature Positive Initiative (2024) What does Nature Positive mean? Available at: https://www.naturepositive.org/ (Accessed: March 2026).
Notpla (2024) ‘Our Technology.’ Available at: https://www.notpla.com/technology (Accessed: March 2026).
Power, G., Gräfe, M. and Klauber, C. (2011) ‘Bauxite residue issues: I. Current management, disposal and storage practices.’
Hydrometallurgy, 108(1–2), pp. 33–45.
Rodale Institute (2020) Regenerative Organic Agriculture and Climate Change: A Down-to-Earth Solution. Kutztown, PA: Rodale Institute.
Tilman, D., Cassman, K.G., Matson, P.A., Naylor, R. and Polasky, S. (2002) ‘Agricultural sustainability and intensive production practices.’ Nature, 418(6898), pp. 671–677.
Trivium Packaging (2023) 2023 Buying Green Report. Amsterdam: Trivium Packaging. Available at: https://buyinggreen.triviumpackaging.com (Accessed: March 2026).
UNEP (2021) From Pollution to Solution: A Global Assessment of Marine Litter and Plastic Pollution. Nairobi: United Nations Environment Programme

Caroline Cawley is our new Business Programme Lead

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Business for Biodiversity Ireland is delighted to announce that Caroline Cawley will be taking over as our Business Programme Lead.

Caroline, who will be working with our Nature Strategy Accelerator Programme member organisations as they progress through our workshop series for 2026, is a senior sustainability and circularity leader with over 15 years’ experience helping organisations embed sustainability, climate action, circularity, and nature considerations into core business strategy and decision-making.

She has worked across consumer electronics, telecommunications, and environmental services sectors, building and leading sustainability functions, developing materiality-led ESG strategies, targets and reporting frameworks, and delivering Net Zero roadmaps and decarbonisation programmes aligned with the Science-based Targets Initiative. Caroline is recognised for her ability to connect sustainability priorities with commercial outcomes, risk management and long-term value creation. She is also recognised as an expert in fostering circular cultures and ways of working in organisations.

Most recently, Caroline served as Head of Corporate Sustainability at Bang & Olufsen, where she established the company’s sustainability function and integrated circularity, product longevity and climate targets into corporate strategy, financing, governance and product development. She has also held a senior sustainability role with TDC Group in Denmark and with Liberty Global in the Netherlands, delivering commercially impactful initiatives in circular and sustainable product design, eco-packaging, supply chains and energy management.

Caroline holds an MBA from Rotterdam School of Management and an MSc in Environmental Science from Trinity College Dublin. She brings a strong business-led perspective to advancing a circular, low-carbon and nature-positive economy which will be a real asset to the delivery of our programme guiding Irish businesses to boost resilience with a strong nature strategy.

We are also pleased to announce that our previous programme lead Dr Catherine Farrell will be staying with us in the role of Nature Strategy Accelerator Programme Business Programme Advisor.

To begin your Nature Strategy Accelerator Programme with us, register for the introductory Discovery Track HERE.

Or contact ccawley@businessforbiodiversity.ie to discuss your business’ options for our advanced tracks.

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.

Dr Catherine Farrell is our Business Programme Lead

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Business For Biodiversity Ireland is delighted to announce that Dr Catherine Farrell is moving over from our Board of Directors to take on the role of Business Programme Lead.

A pioneer of ecological restoration and research in Ireland and internationally, having developed Ireland’s first Biodiversity Action Plan for a corporate body (Bord na Móna), Catherine is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Natural Sciences and Adjunct Teaching Fellow in Trinity Business School at Trinity College Dublin.

Catherine developed a new TCD module for 2024-2025, The Business of Nature Positive, which incorporates learnings about nature, society and economy, exploring ways for undergraduate students to work with businesses in Ireland to support the global Nature Positive Initiative, and report through the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.

Catherine worked on the EPA-funded research project INCASE, applying the UN SEEA Ecosystem Accounting framework at catchment scale in Ireland up to 2022, and her current research as part of BiOrbic National Bioeconomy Research Centre focuses on developing mechanisms to structure, finance, monitor and communicate the direct impacts and broader societal benefits of nature restoration (Project ReFarm).  She was lead organiser of the Peatlands Gathering 2021, and is also a member of the ongoing National Land Use Review process.

Read more on our Meet the Team page.

 

Welcoming the BFBI Board

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Business For Biodiversity Ireland is delighted to announce the appointment of a new Board of Directors to guide and inform our work to ensure Irish businesses are ready to join the global push for a transition to a nature-positive economy.

With a climate and biodiversity emergency declared by the Government in 2019, the BFBI platform was seed-funded by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage in 2021, in recognition of the urgent need for Irish businesses to address their impacts and dependencies on nature. The platform has now developed the Nature Strategy Accelerator Programme to get businesses on track to a nature-positive way of working with up to date guidance on emerging sustainability frameworks and comply with EU directives on environmental reporting.

New Board Chair Susan Rossney, Sustainability Advocacy Manager with the Institute of Chartered Accountants Ireland, said: “A nature-positive economy is vital to our long-term economic resilience – 55% of the world’s GDP is moderately or highly dependent on nature. Despite this, many businesses are unaware of their dependence on and impact on biodiversity, a risk made all the greater now that larger companies are legally bound to disclose information on their environmental impact via the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive or CSRD.”

The BFBI Board of Directors also includes:

– Secretary Lisa Davidson, experienced finance and banking professional

– Vice President for Biodiversity and Climate Action and ecology professor at Trinity College Dublin, Jane Stout

– Dr Catherine Farrell, former Bord na Mona ecologist, now Trinity Professor and pioneer of innovative environmental projects including ReFarm and Natural Capital Ireland

– Ken Whitelaw, Sustainability Manager of IDA Ireland

– Asst Prof Kirstie McAdoo of University College Dublin, formerly Airfield Estate

– world-leading biodiversity consultant Edward Pollard, director of the UK Business and Biodiversity Forum, a specialist in demystifying nature for business.

Welcoming the new Board, Executive Director Lucy Gaffney said: “We are thrilled to have such an accomplished team of experts with a wealth of knowledge and experience in business, sustainability and nature restoration.”

Meet the Business For Biodiversity Ireland Board HERE.

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

Survey on biodiversity skills for sustainable business

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Calling all Irish businesses! Irish and European policy is moving us all toward nature-positive business models and we want to make sure Irish businesses have all the support they need to comply. This short survey will help you to identify the skills, knowledge and competencies that may not yet be represented in your business. 

The results of the survey will allow us to make recommendations to the Skills and Labour Market Research Unit and other relevant entities to ensure the creation of robust interdisciplinary training and educational options to help businesses meet new nature-related reporting responsibilities and accelerate Ireland’s transition to a nature-positive economy.

In partnership with Trinity College Dublin and National Parks and Wildlife Service, this skills gap survey will support Ireland’s National Biodiversity Action Plan (NBAP) 2023-2030.

Please take the survey here – SURVEY LINK

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