Biodiversity is a prerequisite for long-term sustainable value creation for companies. According to World Economic Forum over 55% of global GDP, equivalent to an estimated $58 trillion, is moderately or highly dependent on nature. Yet, at the moment, global material demand is exceeding nature’s capacity to regenerate. This has led to a rapid and unprecedented decline in biodiversity, which increases financial risks, reduces productivity, and undermines livelihoods, and security.
To address this, solutions are needed to integrate economic activity with the maintenance of functioning ecosystems. The big question is how regenerative solutions become economically more viable than those harming biodiversity.
For companies, the challenge is significant. Even gaining a basic understanding of these impacts requires substantial expertise and data. Implementing corrective actions can be costly, and without similar movement from competitors, such steps may not always be viable.
That’s why, for biodiversity efforts to reach the scale and pace required, policymakers must create enabling conditions for simultaneous action. What has happened with climate action in the Nordic energy sector should happen with biodiversity in several sectors over the next years.
Functioning biodiversity markets are needed not only in separate countries, as they are now being built, but as a harmonized Nordic compensation framework and the development of an EU-wide nature credit system. Nordic countries together create a natural area for biodiversity market solutions. Vegetation zones cross national borders, and on that basis, it would be possible to build a functional Nordic compensation market.
Biodiversity should be embedded into industrial, trade, and procurement policies so that it becomes a driver of innovation, competitiveness, and resilience. Clear, sector-specific roadmaps help translate global biodiversity goals into actionable steps for businesses, while financial incentives such as tax deductions can make nature-positive investments more attractive.
All solutions for biodiversity enhancement depend on access to reliable, high-resolution data. Transparent and efficient data systems empower companies to target their efforts where they can have the greatest impact, while also enabling regulators to ensure that biodiversity markets deliver measurable, cost-effective outcomes. Strengthening governance through collaboration can further accelerate progress by aligning efforts, sharing best practices, and building trust in emerging biodiversity markets.
Key recommendations to support a nature-positive transformation:
- Setting clear and aligned biodiversity targets across sectors and jurisdictions, integrating global and EU frameworks and encouraging companies to adopt science-based targets
- Enabling functioning biodiversity markets, including harmonised Nordic compensation frameworks and the development of an EU-wide nature credit system.
- Ensuring incentives for forerunners by aligning tax policies, public procurement, and licensing with nature-positive goals to accelerate private investment.
- Improving biodiversity data availability and usability to lower barriers to action and support credible monitoring of outcomes.
- Strengthening governance through collaboration, especially in the boreal region, by developing joint public-private models.
