Abstract
Nature-related opportunities create positive outcomes for organisations and nature through positive impacts on nature or mitigation of negative impacts on nature. They can involve the development, adaptation, replication, scaling and/or implementation of a new or existing product, service, financial instrument or method or process.
This discussion paper provides a common language to describe the elements and outcomes of nature-related opportunities through examples and case studies focused on practical challenges and solutions across sectors and maturity levels. The objective is to encourage and enable further market action on nature-related opportunities.
The examples and case studies show how business outcomes play a key role in securing approval, financing and execution of nature-related opportunities. They cover economic sectors from agriculture to materials and regions from Europe to Asia. Solutions profiled range from designing for budgetary considerations to changing business models to fit end markets and new products and services.
Key Focus
- Nature-related opportunities comprise activities undertaken by organisations, outputs from those activities and outcomes for organisations and nature
- These case studies demonstrate the practical challenges, such as securing approvals, lack of comparable success stories, supply chain constraints, capacity building and accessing risk capital. Solutions to the challenges include identifying and quantifying benefits to the core business strategies, financing pilots and exemplars, collaboration and using in-depth local knowledge
- Nature-related opportunities can be found as organisations work to mitigate their risks, find efficiencies, address economy-wide dependencies and contribute to nature-positive outcomes
- Nature-related opportunities can provide business value through operational efficiency and resiliency, new product or service markets, supply chain resilience, business model innovation and financial innovation
Key Insights
- Nature-related opportunities are often identified from the bottom up within organisations for different reasons, ranging from mitigating financial risk to recognising interest from clients
- Pilots and exemplars are critical to rapidly demonstrate results and secure management buy-in, attracting finance, securing clients and establishing commercial viability
- Collaboration with parties on the ground, technical experts, counterparties and along the value chain is fundamental to structuring the nature-related opportunity
- Replication or scaling is easier with partners that have in-depth knowledge of the local business and nature context
- Nature-related opportunities that are ideally suited to the private markets are those that clearly tackle financial or core business strategy issues