How can we ensure business engagement with biodiversity delivers for nature? And what is the role of consultancy?

This blog post was written by Dr Thomas White, Principal Consultant at The Biodiversity Consultancy and Postdoctoral Researcher in the Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science, University of Oxford.

Businesses are increasingly seen as key players for delivering biodiversity goals

Businesses are being increasingly looked upon to help contribute towards global goals of nature recovery. Indeed, Target 15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Framework explicitly requests that businesses start to measure the impacts of their activities on nature, and take actions to mitigate and compensate for those impacts. This increased prominence builds upon years of work in various business sectors, where actions were often required by policy or financiers to address negative impacts on biodiversity. Taking the example of a housing development in the UK, measures could include avoidance of impacts on protected or high biodiversity areas (e.g. SSSIs, ancient woodlands), minimizing impacts through changes in project location and design (e.g. reducing need for tree or hedgerow removal, incorporating swift nesting bricks), or compensatory actions to offset impacts through habitat restoration such as that required by Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) legislation.

Yet achieving ambitious goals such as ‘Net Gain’ and aligning operations with nature recovery will require transformative changes in the way businesses operate. There are currently many uncertainties as to how we can ensure business effectively engage with biodiversity conservation.

The importance of evidence-based action

If we want businesses to take meaningful action to mitigate impacts, and deliver on goals such as Biodiversity Net Gain and Nature Positive, it is vital that there is a solid evidence base and logic underlying the strategies that are being deployed. However, whilst there are many examples of good practice and many actors with good intentions, the sector has too many examples of poor or ineffective mitigation practice, some of which is widely applied, representing a real risk for biodiversity, and raising concerns about the credibility of some business engagement with biodiversity loss. For example, a paper in 2021 led by Bronwen Hunter at the University of Kent identified that many commonly applied mitigation measures on UK housing developments lack a solid evidence base, and guidance that is often used as a justification for these measures had limited referencing and worrying trends of circular referencing without clear evidence underlying claims of effectiveness. To give a specific example, reptile translocation is often used as a measure to mitigate impacts on common lizard populations in the UK, but evidence suggests this approach is very limited in effectiveness.

Using evidence to guide practice for business impact mitigation is beneficial from multiple perspectives. Firstly, and most importantly, it helps ensure that action taken to reduce impacts, protect and restore nature, is more likely to deliver conservation benefits – making the most of the limited funding often flowing into conservation. Secondly, from a corporate perspective it can reduce the reputational  and financial risks associated with ineffective or suboptimal practice – a risk only likely to grow as expectations for effective action on biodiversity strengthen. Lastly, from the perspective of a consultancy, it is important to ensure that recommendations and statements made are robust and it is transparent what those recommendations are based on. If this is not done, consultancies risk poorly advising business clients, and face risks if the intended outcomes for biodiversity are not achieved. 

In 2022, we published a paper outlining 6 principles for evidence-based biodiversity strategy design by businesses. These principles were:

1. Evidence use is mainstreamed across business operations
2. Evidence is collated and appraised to guide decision making
3. Evidence use is documented and based on clear processes
4. Baselines, actions and impacts are documented and reported
5. Monitoring is effectively implemented and supports adaptive management
6. Information is shared to strengthen the evidence base

The idea was that if these principles are met, then an organization can be more confident that the strategy deployed is delivering the intended biodiversity benefits, whilst also being transparent and contributing to building the evidence base. Ensuring evidence is appropriately used in strategy design is important to prevent unintended environmental and social impacts from business engagement with biodiversity.

Putting the principles into practice

The Biodiversity Consultancy (TBC) has recently been recognized as an Evidence Champion by the Conservation Evidence group at the University of Cambridge. This is due to our efforts to integrate evidence into our project work and decision making.

We have recently developed an evidence strategy for the organization, and a training program for new staff to ensure evidence use becomes formalized and remains a core principle of our work. Building on our previous project work, the evidence strategy covers a range of topics including the following points, to try and ensure we meet the principles of evidence-use outlined above.

• Firstly, the strategy covers what counts and evidence and where we need to integrate it into decision making. The key thing here is to identify the critical assumptions we are making when assessing impacts or proposing mitigation actions.
• Secondly, the strategy includes guidance on collating and appraising evidence behind these assumptions, and how to allocate and prioritize effort towards evidence collation. Identifying easy-wins is a key part of the approach here, where we identify where evidence has already been compiled or collected (e.g. meta-analyses, systematic reviews, databases). In addition, our approach includes guidance on how to prioritize effort towards the most critical assumptions made in projects.
• Thirdly, we provide guidance for documenting the evidence base and communicating evidence and uncertainty in our outputs to business clients. This allows us to be transparent about what recommendations are based on, and where there is uncertainty in our recommendations due to approaches used or gaps in the underlying evidence base.
• Fourthly, we include information on monitoring and building the evidence base, and implementing that within our projects if possible. This includes i) monitoring and learning within TBC to ensure we learn from previous project experience and expertise and experience of all staff, and ii) our approach to scientific outputs and sharing of information.

We are now working to embed this approach into our organizational procedures. The induction program for new staff is a key part of this, but also embedding some of these points in project review procedures, project management and close-out procedures.

This is not to say this is easy. Embedding new approaches into existing company procedures is always a challenge for organizations. In a consultancy setting, where time and resources are often limited for projects, there are also challenges about the effort required for detailed evidence use, and deciding the level of effort required to collate evidence and when enough effort has been allocated. There is also a need in consultancy settings to provide clear concise and understandable messaging, whilst also recognizing nuances and complexities in conservation science, and often high uncertainties in the evidence base. This can be challenging to navigate.

The role of the consultancy sector

The consultancy sector acts as a bridge between science and practice, translating the sometimes complex world of biodiversity science into practical and actionable advice by businesses. As consultants, we are seen as purveyors of evidence-based advice to clients, where our recommendations and conclusions are accurate, and proposed actions will deliver for nature if implemented. Whether or not we meet these expectations depends on the quality of our advice and the evidence underlying it.

Thus the consultancy sector can play an important role in facilitating improvements in business practice. But doing so needs us to engage with the challenges of evidence use – improving both the professionality of the sector, and outcomes for nature.

TBC are proud to be partnering with Conservation Evidence to try and promote evidence-based practice more widely in the consultancy sector. In future we hope to deliver some webinars to share our experiences on integrating evidence use in practice.