Unpacking the Nature-Positive Economy with key underlying concepts

The concept of ‘Nature Positive’ (NP) has resonated with businesses, governments, and non-governmental organisations; as a way of framing biodiversity commitments and aligning with global sustainability goals. While Nature Positive is well defined, we still lack concrete pathways towards operationalising NP in the context of an economy. This paper aims to provide a definition of the ‘Nature-Positive Economy’ (NPE) and discusses key underlying concepts to unpack NP within an economy. We conducted a survey with over 750 participants from over 50 countries, held targeted stakeholder consultations at several events, and reviewed policy documents, scientific articles, and grey literature. Through extensive stakeholder consultations, we co-developed a definition of a NPE as ‘an economy where the net result of all economic activities combined leads to an absolute increase in nature, to the point of full recovery and prosperity for all of society.’ Operationalising the NPE means that actors take actions across scales and sectors, grounded in social well-being and equity to reduce nature-negative impacts, increase nature-positive actions, and enact transformative change. The stakeholder consultation raised key challenges of: (i) A net outcomes approach; (ii) Full recovery of nature and transitional phase; (iii) Sectors and dealing trade-offs; (iv) Accountability; and (v) Equity and justice.

We seek to clarify underlying concepts of the NPE. First, the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) and NPE inherently incorporate a net outcomes approach, which requires the use of biodiversity offsets supported by the mitigation hierarchy. Second, full recovery entails that nature recovers to support future generations and not necessarily a return to a past baseline, thereby including novel ecosystems. Third, the NPE is a transitional state of the economy towards full recovery, where the economy is envisioned to have achieved a stable state of operating within planetary boundaries. Fourth, accountability mechanisms are needed to address the risk of greenwashing. Lastly, equity and justice are key principles to guide deliberative transformative change towards a NPE that prioritises social wellbeing alongside nature restoration. Deepening our understanding of how to achieve NP outcomes in the context of an economy will help further the implementation of the GBF.