Published on 24 March 2025
Ryan Nolan – University of Exeter
Noel Morrin – University of Exeter
The business and finance sectors are paying increasing attention to the impacts of their activities on biodiversity, and the risks posed by biodiversity loss. RENEW is working to understand the barriers and enablers for business action on biodiversity, to better understand how to support action for biodiversity renewal within the corporate sphere.
This work aims to:
We are engaging with major business and finance networks to understand how corporate decision-makers drive nature-positive change. Through collaboration with leading UK business and finance networks, this work is identifying and analysing the roles of influential actors as well as the barriers they face.
To do this we are exploring some of the key internal barriers identified in the literature, such as limited knowledge and expertise on biodiversity within firms, the difficulty of translating biodiversity into business-relevant metrics, and a lack of board-level engagement on the issue. At the same time, we are focusing on the enabling factors that support action, including leadership commitment, collaboration with scientific experts, emerging policy frameworks, and growing stakeholder expectations for nature-positive business models.
We are combining this extensive review of academic and practitioner literature with in-depth interviews with key corporate decision-makers and solutions providers such as consultants and technology firms. Together, these methods will provide actionable insights for enabling corporate biodiversity action.
Our early interviews confirm many of the barriers identified in the literature, including a widespread hesitation to act due to uncertainty and lack of perfect data. This ‘perfection paralysis’ reflects a common view that biodiversity is too complex to address without crystal clear information, which in turn delays small but practical steps that could be taken now. This reinforces the need to explore how organisations and nature champions can move forward with imperfect knowledge, and what kinds of tools or frameworks help overcome this barrier.
Building on this research, we intend to create a practical nature champions guide. The guide will equip influential actors with the tools and knowledge they need to accelerate organisational change towards nature-positive outcomes.
