Concept Note: Framing the Nature-Positive Economy

A Nature-Positive Economy (NPE) aims for full nature recovery while ensuring prosperity for all of society. A NPE reduces nature-related financial, economic, and supply risks for sectors most exposed to vulnerable value chains and contributes to national security and resilience. It enables competitiveness by creating new, meaningful and inclusive jobs in the field of nature recovery, supports the transition of existing industries to more sustainable business models, and helps mitigate the nature crisis, which undermines food security and threatens vulnerable communities. 

The NPE builds on the Nature Positive (NP) concept that has been used by businesses, governments, and non-governmental organisations to indicate their alignment with global environmental goals. One leading definition of NP is from the Nature Positive Initiative (2023) that is to: “halt and reverse nature loss by 2030 on a 2020 baseline and achieve full recovery by 2050”. Nature-positive actions aim to protect, restore and use nature in a sustainable way. These actions contribute to broader sustainability frameworks such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the KunmingMontreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), and the Paris Agreement on climate change. This integrated approach is vital for addressing the triple planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. 

The current global economy has contributed to substantial degradation of nature as the diverse values of nature are not recognised by and incorporated into current dominant economic models and policy-making approaches. The compounding impacts of the triple planetary crises have a material impact on the economy and the financial sector. While over half of the world’s total GDP is dependent on nature,4 it is well established that our current economic systems are one of the main contributors to nature loss.5 To protect our future, IPBES call for a transformative change in economic systems to address the underlying causes of nature loss.6 This requires a prioritisation of equity and shared prosperity in economic systems based on a better understanding of reciprocal humannature relationships. This shift towards long term collective gain in economic systems is aligned with the focus of the nature-positive economy on full nature recovery and prosperity for all of society. Despite the Nature Positive concept being well defined, there remains a lack of clarity on concrete pathways to realising a Nature-Positive Economy (NPE) that prioritises ecological recovery and social wellbeing.

Niak Sian Koh (University of Oxford), Marianne Zandersen (Aarhus University), Joseph Bull (University of Oxford), Jomme Desair (INBO), Benjamin Kupilas (Ecologic Institute), Siobhan McQuaid (Trinity College Dublin).