By Edward Pollard.

If you are looking to prepare a company’s first nature strategy you may have great expectations. But you’ll need realistic expectations. Be it for TNFD, SBTN, regulators or just to do the right thing, preparing a nature strategy will be more time consuming and challenging than you think. Don’t let this put you off, but think about how you are going to do it. Take some time and use it as an opportunity to involve, integrate and inspire.

One of the most gratifying trends I have witnessed in the past five years has been the rapid growth in the number, and diversity of companies taking an interest in understanding their potential impacts and dependencies on nature. Gone are the days when this was just the purview of a few extractives striving for Net Positive Impact at some sites, or commodity companies aiming for certification or zero deforestation. Raised awareness of the issue, and emerging regulatory requirements mean that a dazzling array of companies are looking into this (for a snapshot look at the list of TNFD early adopters). These companies are interested in assessing impacts and dependencies, developing plans, and some are even implementing the plans.

But with this I’ve seen another worrying trend, one that appeared to be getting worse: unrealistic expectations regarding what it takes to develop and implement a nature strategy, both in terms of time, and of human and financial resources. Time and again I have seen requests for comprehensive assessments, target setting, plans and disclosure, with the anticipation that it could be done in a few months, on a very limited budget. Now, I never sensed this was done out of an attempt to drive a hard bargain with service providers, I tend to think it’s simply a combination of naiveté and genuinely limited budgets for nature being carved out of an already stretched sustainability budget.
But here’s the thing, while better and better tools, methods and approaches are being developed every day and getting increasingly effective, they still take time and investment. And I don’t just mean the time to process and evaluate information (although that can be one part of it). This is also means the time to collate and clean diverse data from a range of sources, and then to work out what it all means.

Usually many people from the company will need to be involved, most of them not in the sustainability team and all of them busy. Do not underestimate how long it will take just to find the data. And then of course one has to interpret the findings and actually develop an approach. Not a lot of point in going to all the effort to assess impacts if you are not going to use the findings to implement effective actions.

Even before data are collated, analysed and interpreted however, it is vitally important to build support and consensus internally. Taking action for nature will involve everyone in a company. The sustainability team obviously, but also procurement, legal, facility managers, HR, social performance, finance etc etc. People who have never heard of or considered the need for a nature strategy. For it to work, they need to be on board and it may take time and effort to inform and inspire.

So, by all means strive for everything, but provide a generous budget, and generous (and flexible timeline). And you know what, if a service provider does say they can do it quickly, on a shoe string, ask them how. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is.

Phased expectations

Better yet, break things up a bit. If you do have limited budget this year, spend it wisely.

Start by focussing on building understanding and internal constituency, use the early days to really think about the why, what, when, and who of a nature strategy. This may also unlock the resources you need to do it properly, especially as hopefully you and your colleagues will now know what doing it properly actually means.

These early phases can also be the right time to get your data in order, what do you have? where is it? Are there any significant gaps? Is it all in the same units (I kid ye not, I’ve had colleagues spend months trying to work out if volume data are in metric or imperial units, only to find it’s a bit of both).

I love it when a plan comes together

There’s nothing wrong with preparing a plan for a plan. In fact I’d argue that disclosing a plan for a plan will help bolster internal and external support for your efforts. Better yet through these early investigations you may realise a couple of things. You may find that your company is already doing more to manage impacts and dependencies on nature than you appreciated, but it’s just part of a water, or climate strategy. You may also realise that detailed analyses are not essential for getting started on some making some changes and taking some actions. Without a doubt a good analysis will help set effective, evidence-informed targets and actions, but there’s a lot that can be done in the mean time. So perhaps your plan for a plan can actually be more than that. It can be an interim plan. Say what you are already doing, say what you are about to start doing, and say what you want to know (and how you are going to find out) so you can do more. Then use this plan to develop wise, well resourced scopes of work, or to guide building internal capacity, or to find the right partners, or all of the above.

A nature positive future can only be achieved by minimising the impacts of business on biodiversity, and by restoring our natural world. Rushed, poorly conceived corporate nature strategies may tick a regulatory box, or meet a personal KPI, but they won’t deliver genuine change. So take the time needed, get it right first time. It will pay dividends.

Edward Pollard is a biodiversity conservationist with nearly 30 years experience.
For more, follow his writing on Medium.