What's behind nature's decline?

Achieving a nature-positive future—and defining corporate alignment to it—must start with understanding the science of nature loss.

The key governmental panel on nature science, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, otherwise known as IPBES, has found (Figure ES2) that globally, declines in the state of nature (measured in terms of ecosystems, species, and nature’s contributions to people) were the result of five key pressures:

land and sea use change
direct exploitation of organisms
climate change
pollution
invasion of alien species.

These pressures in turn have resulted from underlying drivers, fueled by human values and behaviors.

We have used insights articulated by IPBES around the pressures and states of nature to organize key pieces of the framework for science-based targets for nature.

The cumulative impact of these man-made forces has been the loss of biodiversity and the undermining of nature’s ability to provide essential services.

Since at least the 1970s, reducing costs, maximizing yields, limitless economic growth, increasing efficiency, and a focus on short-term profits have been central tenets of the social and economic discourses around the production of essential and discretionary goods like food, energy, and fiber.

Almost 50 years later, we have come to realize this focus has come at an expense: Around the world, we can observe a decline in nature’s ability to provide critical services such as pollination, regulation of water and air quality, and even the maintenance
of ecosystems of cultural value (IPBES 2019a).

The products and services offered to meet everyday human needs like eating, transport, and clothing; the systems of government we rely on to protect human well-being; and the technologies that have transformed our world mean that we are all causing the destruction being unleashed onto the “natural world”—and therefore, onto ourselves.

How SBTs take aim at the drivers and pressures of nature loss

Figure ES3: High-level target categorization for SBTs for nature — how SBTs take aim at the drivers and pressures fueling the degradation of nature and the state of nature itself. On the previous page, SBTN’s Action Framework (AR3T) summarizes the types of actions that companies will take to align to Earth’s limits and societal goals for nature.

Figure: Drivers, pressures, and states of nature loss, adapted from the IPBES Global Assessment, 2019. The “drivers” feed into “pressures,” which then fuel the degradation and loss of nature (measured in state variables) within the land, freshwater, and ocean realms. The percentages on the bars represent the approximate global importance of different pressures in each realm; see the IPBES Global Assessment for more details. The right-hand side highlights some of the key “states” of nature loss related to ecosystems, species, and nature’s contributions to people.

These pressures and drivers are core components of SBTN’s framework for measurement of corporate environmental impact and our framework for positive corporate action.