Biodiversity and Business: Strategic Implications of the 2026 IPBES Report

On 9 February 2026, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), often described as the “IPCC for biodiversity”, published its first global assessment of the relationship between business and biodiversity.
 

Prepared over three years by 79 international experts and endorsed by 150 governments, the report marks a turning point in how businesses are expected to account for nature.

 

Biodiversity: an economic foundation, not a sector-specific issue

 

Biodiversity encompasses the diversity of life at three interdependent levels: genetic diversity, species diversity and ecosystem diversity. It underpins the stability and functioning of natural systems.
 

These systems, in turn, sustain economic activity. Agricultural productivity depends on pollination and soil fertility. Industrial processes rely on stable water cycles. Entire value chains depend on biological resources and the regulatory services that ecosystems provide.
 

The central message of the IPBES report is clear: all companies depend on ecosystem services and contribute, directly or indirectly, to their degradation. This two-way relationship dependency and impact, cuts across sectors and regions.
 

What distinguishes this report is not that the observation is new, but the depth of its synthesis: the evidence is now structured, quantified and internationally endorsed.

 

A structural misalignment of financial flows

 

One of the report’s central findings is the scale of misaligned financial flows. Subsidies to activities that drive biodiversity loss — intensive  agriculture, fossil fuels, mining and industrial fishing — amount to approximately USD 7.3 trillion annually. Investment in ecosystem protection and restoration remains minimal, at roughly 3% of global flows.
 

This imbalance has direct economic consequences. It sustains business models that rely on declining natural assets, while leaving chronically underinvested the very systems that make those models viable.

 

A strategic risk still poorly integrated

 

Despite this structural dependency, biodiversity rarely features in core business decision-making. According to the report, only a limited number of organisations have integrated biodiversity into governance, risk frameworks or investment processes.
 

In practice, companies tend to focus on their own operations. This is understandable but insufficient. The most significant impacts and dependencies typically lie further along the value chain, particularly upstream.
 

Thousands of sites, suppliers and production systems contribute to a company’s footprint. This is where land-use change, resource extraction and ecosystem pressures are concentrated.
 

A second blind spot concerns dependencies. Companies rely on ecosystem services — climate regulation, water cycles, soil fertility — yet these dependencies are seldom assessed outside regulatory exercises. Measuring impacts without assessing dependencies provides an incomplete basis for decision-making.
 

This misalignment translates into three categories of risk:
 

• Operational risk: resource degradation, supply instability, reduced agricultural yields
• Financial risk: asset exposure in ecologically fragile areas, increasing scrutiny from investors integrating nature-related risks
• Regulatory risk: the report explicitly calls for stronger public policy frameworks. While implementation remains uneven, the direction is clear
   

Focusing solely on compliance misses the underlying issue.

The report highlights a more fundamental risk: the breakdown of ecosystem services on which entire sectors depend. This is not a disclosure issue. It is a business continuity issue.

 

From diagnosis to action: three priorities for companies

 

The IPBES report does not stop at diagnosis; it identifies a broad set of concrete actions. Three priorities stand out as particularly significant for companies.

 

1. Assess impacts and dependencies across the full value chain

 

A robust assessment must encompass the full chain — upstream suppliers and raw material sourcing, as well as downstream use and end-of-life phases.
 

Biodiversity pressures — land-use change, pollution, overexploitation of resources, invasive species and climate change — are distributed across value chains. Limiting the analysis to direct operations systematically underestimates both impacts and exposure.

 

2. Embed biodiversity into governance and risk management

 

Biodiversity cannot be confined to CSR functions. It affects investment decisions, procurement strategies, risk management frameworks and, ultimately, corporate strategy.
 

Integrating biodiversity requires aligning internal governance, decision-making processes and performance indicators with nature-related risks and dependencies.

 

3. Engage in collective action

 

The transformations required exceed the capacity of individual companies. Sector-wide dynamics, the alignment of the financial system and public policy frameworks are critical.
 

Industry initiatives, multi-stakeholder platforms and corporate coalitions play a central role in addressing systemic drivers of biodiversity loss.

 

Beyond risk: emerging sources of value

 

Addressing biodiversity-related risks also reveals operational and strategic opportunities:
 

• Strengthening supply chain resilience by reducing exposure to degraded ecosystems
• Aligning biodiversity and climate strategies, recognising their interdependencies
• Anticipating emerging frameworks such as the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) and Science Based Targets for Nature
• Responding to increasing expectations from investors, clients and employees

These opportunities are secondary to the risk dimension, but they reinforce the business case for action.

 

Where to start: materiality as a decision tool

 

Companies can approach biodiversity strategy from several angles : site management, supplier engagement, sourcing policies or internal capability building.
 

However, without a clear prioritization framework, these efforts risk remaining fragmented.
 

A robust materiality assessment is therefore a prerequisite. It must capture both the company’s impacts on biodiversity and its dependencies on ecosystem services across the full value chain.
 

This analysis enables companies to focus on the most significant issues, rather than spreading resources thin across less critical ones.
 

Priorities vary widely depending on business models. Asset-intensive industries may concentrate on direct land-use impacts, while companies with extended supply chains may prioritize sourcing strategies and supplier engagement in high-risk regions.
 

There is no standard template. That is exactly what a materiality analysis reveals.

 

CSRD and double materiality: an existing regulatory anchor

 

For companies subject to the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), this approach is already embedded in regulatory requirements.
 

Double materiality explicitly requires organisations to assess both:
 

• their impacts on biodiversity
• the risks that biodiversity loss poses to their activities

This gives companies a structured starting point for integrating biodiversity into corporate strategy.

 

Operational tools and methodological frameworks

 

A few structuring decisions can set the process in motion:

 

• Identify the critical dependencies of your operations on ecosystems, drawing on tools such as ENCORE (Exploring Natural Capital Opportunities, Risks and Exposure). 
• Assess your biodiversity footprint to quantify your company's impacts accross the full value chain. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodologies provide a structured, robust and widely recognised framework for this purpose, complemented where needed by specific indicators to enrich the analysis and go beyond what LCA alone can capture. Alongside these approaches, programmes such as Diag Biodiversité offer a structured entry point into the process. This support scheme, aimed at SMEs and mid-sized companies, was established by Bpifrance, France's public investment bank, and the French Biodiversity Agency (OFB). EVEA works with companies through this programme to assess their ecosystem impacts and develop an operational action plan.
• Define a strategy and targets aligned with recognised scientific standards. The LEAP approach (developed under the TNFD) provides an operational approach for locating material issues, assessing impacts and dependencies, and preparing a structured action plan.
• For more advanced organisations, the Science Based Targets for Nature (SBTN) enables companies to set targets aligned with planetary boundaries.
• To evaluate the overall maturity of a biodiversity strategy, ACT Biodiversity framework serves as a useful assessment tool.

These tools are complementary and should be combined depending on the company's maturity and specific challenges.

 

Nature is not an external issue: our approach at EVEA

 

The IPBES report does not position companies as conservation actors. It requires them to recognize a more fundamental reality: nature is not external to the economy, it underpins it.
 

Failing to account for itmeans operating with a blind spot in the asset base on which business performance depends.
 

Companies that engage with biodiversity today are not only addressing an environmental issue. They are correcting a structural blind spot before it translates into operational, financial or strategic disruption.
 

The report also has implications for how biodiversity is addressed in practice. It makes clear that biodiversity is no longer a peripheral concern but a strategic priority, on a par with climate, requiring immediate action.In practical terms, the most effective approaches rely on three elements: a comprehensive view of the value chain, analytical tools capable of capturing dispersed and indirect impacts, and the ability to translate findings into concrete action quickly.
 

At EVEA, Life Cycle Assessment applied to biodiversity forms the foundation of our approach, not as an additional reporting layer, but as a decision-support tool that helps pinpoint impact hotspots, even where they are hardest to see.
 

However, LCA on its own does not fully capture the complexity of biodiversity-related issues. It needs to be complemented by other tools, datasets and modelling approaches, drawing on expertise in biodiversity, agronomy and ecology.
 

This combination of methodological rigor and on-the-ground expertise allows us to go beyond standard analytical frameworks and tackle the full complexity of biodiversity challenges faced by companies.
 

If you are looking to identify your critical dependencies and and factor them into your decision-making, feel free to reach out.
 

Topic led by Mathilde Audrain and Mathilde Verrier, LCA and biodiversity consultants