Nature Positive Business Transformation Beyond Climate

Planetary Boundaries in Focus

Biodiversity

A new content series that explores how business is evolving in a world where Planetary Boundaries must be consistently integrated into day-to-day decision-making and long-term strategy across industries.

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Biodiversity: the “hidden” engine of our planet​

For long, greenhouse gas emissions have been the focal point of sustainability. However, there are other key elements that compose our planetary systems that deserve as much attention — and biodiversity is certainly one of them.

It refers to the variety of genes, species and ecosystems on Earth, influencing the interactions of billions of living beings. For humans, biodiversity not only has an intrinsic value, but it is also deeply connected to the cultural, regulating and provisioning services from nature.

Despite that, societal values and behaviours have already put more than one million species of plants and animals — of the eight million estimated to exist — at risk of extinction. Such biodiversity loss has profound consequences for our society and is directly driven by five factors (in order of impact):

  1. Changes in land and sea use
  2. Direct exploitation of organisms
  3. Climate change
  4. Pollution
  5. Invasion of alien species

According to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) — the main independent intergovernmental body for biodiversity and ecosystem services — the intensity of these drivers differs regionally, ultimately underpinned by factors such as production and consumption patterns, trade, and technological innovations.

With time, this context has become undeniably material for companies. The World Economic Forum (WEF) estimates that more than half of the world’s GDP is moderately or heavily dependent on nature. If enterprises continue to operate in unsustainable ways, they will feed a vicious circle where not only the multiple consequences of biodiversity loss become more intense, but also their operations become more fragile.

Impact Labs is committed to changing this system and helping organisations operate within the boundaries of our planet. With offers such as biodiversity trainings and footprints, we are leading the transition to a nature-positive economy.

Biodiversity. Queensland Government, 18/07/2025.

What are ecosystem services? European Environment Agency, 18/12/2025.

What is biodiversity and why is it important to preserve it? European Environment Agency, 17/11/2025.

Facts about the nature crisis. UN Environment Programme, 28/04/2025.

Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. IPBES, 2019.

Nature Risk Rising: Why the Crisis Engulfing Nature Matters for Business and the Economy. World Economic Forum, 2020.

The methodological assessment report on the impact and dependence of business on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people: Summary for policy makers. IPBES, 08/02/2026.

Impact Labs x Darwin: Scaling the Nature-Positive Transition

As previously mentioned, there is strong case for companies to go beyond GHG emissions, especially when assessing their environmental impacts. Without accounting for broader elements, such as land use changes and water consumption, these assessments become limited — restricting the capacity to further understand the nature-related risks, dependencies and opportunities.

Impact Labs and its technology partner Darwin Data are implementing a methodology to measure biodiversity impact with rigour and transparency. Darwin’s platform combines advanced technologies with impact and lifecycle databases to scale nature strategies – including biodiversity footprinting, risk assessments, spatial analysis and reporting.

Illustration of the Darwin Platform.

The process starts with mapping all entities related to the organisation, and associating to them the datapoints necessary to analyse the impact on biodiversity. There are several possible data sources — e.g. financial, commodities/product and pressure — which should be combined with the entities’ location to better assess how the company affects local environmental pressures and its proximity to high-risk/sensitivity areas.

Then, the platform will convert this data into both pressure metrics, related to the five drivers of biodiversity loss, and a unified score of biodiversity impact using relevant models and datasets. With this information, it is possible to identify the most significant impacts of the organisation’s operation, its net/avoided impact and other relevant outputs that are particular to the scope of each assessment.

By combining Impact Labs’ nature-positive expertise with Darwin Data’s cutting-edge technology, our methodology is ideal for companies that either want to improve or start their biodiversity impact assessments.

Our services also include the definition of impact KPIs, the development of strategic action plans and the improvement of data sources — further enhancing the scale and impact of our clients environmental strategy.

Contact us for a demo or more information.

DarwinData

How private finance can support nature-positive outcomes

The process starts with mapping all entities related to the organisation, and associating to them the datapoints necessary to analyse the impact on biodiversity. There are several possible data sources — e.g. financial, commodities/product and pressure — which should be combined with the entities’ location to better assess how the company affects local environmental pressures and its proximity to high-risk/sensitivity areas.

Then, the platform will convert this data into both pressure metrics, related to the five drivers of biodiversity loss, and a unified score of biodiversity impact using relevant models and datasets. With this information, it is possible to identify the most significant impacts of the organisation’s operation, its net/avoided impact and other relevant outputs that are particular to the scope of each assessment.

ESG due diligence methodologies have rightfully become indispensable for investors, helping them not only mitigate risks, but also preserve and enhance deal value. As dealmakers have difficulty quantifying ESG’s impacts, sustainability specialists can help by enhancing resource allocation and improving the quality and precision of due diligence, allowing them to get tailored insights that facilitate decision-making processes.

In 2024, a group of major French institutional investors launched “Objectif Biodiversité”*, a fund dedicated to financing companies that provide concrete solutions for the preservation and restoration of ecosystems.

Impact Labs has contributed to guaranteeing a rigorous approach with an additional layer of independent assessment with our due diligence methodology, which:

  • Qualifies and quantifies biodiversity impact.
  • Provides a consistent and comparable view of a companies sustainability performance that can be mapped to an investors’ portfolio risk framework;
  • Aligns with EU regulations and leading standards, facilitating compliance and reporting for the investors under the SFDR, EU Taxonomy or CSRD;
  • Results in impact qualification grounded on globally recognised frameworks and databases, complemented with company and industry knowledge to capture context-specific nuances.

Our process is rooted in strong sustainability and data expertise to assess key points and answer key questions:

  • Biodiversity Impact: What is the company’s biodiversity impact?
  • ESG and Mission Purpose Maturity: How robust is the company’s ESG impact management and mission purpose?
  • ESG Materiality: What are the company’s material topics and what are the associated risks?
  • Strategic Risk Management and Impact Plan: How can the company manage the identified risks in an actionable way during the investment period?

Ultimately, our due diligence process helps to identify value-creation opportunities and guarantee tangible nature-positive results. The influence and adoption of ESG factors on due diligence processes is not yet uniform, however Europe is at the forefront and we are confident these processes can promote not only better financial performance, but also better sustainability performance, for people and the planet.

*The French institutional investors behind the “Objectif Biodiversité” (Biodiversity Objective) initiative, launched in 2024 with Af2i – Abeille Assurances (Aéma Groupe), BNP Paribas Cardif, BPCE Assurances, Caisse des Dépôts, CNP Assurances, EDF Gestion, MAIF, MACIF (Aéma Groupe), Malakoff Humanis, Société Générale Assurances, Crédit Agricole Assurances, AXA, Allianz France, AÉSIO mutuelle (Aéma Groupe), PRO BTP, and CARAC – now joined by Caisse Générale de Prévoyance des Caisses d’Épargne (CGP), announce the selection of Starquest-Montefiore as the manager for the unlisted fund.

Kengelbach, J. et. al (2024, April). The payoffs and pitfalls of ESG due diligence. Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Gibson Dunn

State of Nature Finance (2026), UNEP

RegenAg as a Tool for Sustainable Agriculture Transition

Agriculture sits at the fault line of planetary boundaries.

Farmland is where biodiversity loss, land use change, and carbon emissions converge. It is a pressure point. Yet, because of its scale, it is also one of the greatest levers for restoration. Agricultural land is both a challenge and a powerful opportunity to create biodiversity buffers and regenerate ecosystems from within supply chains.

Farming is not separate from nature. It is rooted in soil, water, climate, and living systems. Production does not stand outside these forces; it emerges from them.

Modern intensive agriculture treats production as an equation: inputs in, outputs out. Control the inputs, control the yield. This view ignores the living foundation of productivity. Soil fertility is generated by roots, microorganisms, and nutrient cycles working together. When these biological relationships are weakened, productivity becomes dependent on external substitutes.

There is urgency in shifting course. Agriculture must recognise how deeply it depends on biodiversity and natural processes, and begin to work with them rather than override them.

Regenerative agriculture offers a holistic, place-based, practical pathway. Rather than imposing a fixed system, it reads the context, follows natural flows and patterns, and treats food production as the living, evolving process it truly is. This way of seeing agriculture naturally leads to a set of guiding principles — ones that prioritise relationship over extraction, offering a shared direction: toward healthier soils, richer ecosystems, and farming systems that can truly last.

By diversifying crops and land use, it creates habitats for birds, insects, and small mammals, strengthening ecosystem resilience. Functional biodiversity reduces the need for chemical plant protection by restoring natural balance.

Continuous root growth and living ground cover feed soil life through root exudates (root glucose based production that enables plant communication with the rhizosphere), activating microbial communities. Healthy microbiomes build fertile soils. Fertile soils produce nutritious crops. Above- and below-ground biodiversity reinforce each other in a self-sustaining cycle.

Our team has the chance to continuously participate in the construction of regenerative projects, through contextual building of GaiaLabs and learning opportunities such as Phillipe Birkin’s workshop at the Herdade no Tempo.

At Impact Labs, we work with this reality, supporting companies in transforming their supply chains to reconnect agricultural production with biodiversity flows and strengthen resilience from the first mile.

Impact without measurement is intention and our MRV framework gives regenerative commitments a rigorous, transparent backbone.

Biodiversity & Impact Measurement​​

The latest IPBES report is clear: businesses are highly dependent on Nature. Hence, it becomes critical to measure the impact on biodiversity of their operation, allowing companies to take the best operational decisions to reduce it and to potentially monetise the positive effects of improving practices.

For example, a company that shifts to regenerative agriculture can bring multiple advantages to the environment. These benefits could be monetarily valued in different ways, such as Credit mechanisms – e.g. Biodiversity or Nature Credits -, Payments for Ecosystem Services and Green Premiums, paid either by the final consumer (B2C activity) or a company (B2B activity).

In general, there are two methods to measure biodiversity impacts. The first is action-based, linking an activity with the average impact measured. Despite only considering a general context and average data, it is easy to use and scale. The second is outcome-based, measuring specific on-the-ground effects. In this case, the assessments are more detailed, yet it can be complex and costly to execute.

And to clearly measure the biodiversity state of nature, there are two main categories of indicators:

  • Species diversity: species richness, presence of important species…
  • Habitat quality and complexity: canopy cover, presence of specific habitats such as wetlands…

Over time, different types of measurement have been developed, each with its own purpose and attributes.

The most common, and historical, is field sensing. On-the-ground biodiversity information is collected either manually by an ecologist or using devices like bioacoustics sensors or camera traps. New platforms, such as the crowdsourced iNaturalist, have also been gaining traction and reducing the costs of collecting information.

However, advanced technologies are being scaled as well. Soil and water sampling, with either eDNA or Chemical & Physical analysis, are powerful tools to understand species richness and ecosystem conditions. Remote sensing, utilising drones or satellites, collect data from the air with different resolution levels, facilitating flora assessments at large scale.

This measurement market, despite its ongoing improvements, still has key pain points:

  • Lack of maturity and excessive fragmentation, with many new solutions created in the past few years.
  • Solutions are not always adapted to local contexts, due to specific flora and fauna.
  • Measurement is still quite expensive, and can vary a lot from one player to another.