Our Nature Positive Future
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Article summary
- The Nature Positive Initiative, launched in 2023, aims to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 and restore ecosystems by 2050, with a focus on creating a unified, global approach to nature regeneration.
- The initiative encourages collaboration across governments, businesses, and civil society to create a “Nature Positive” world, integrating biodiversity goals with climate and sustainable development targets.
- With a strong focus on measurable outcomes, the Nature Positive movement tracks progress by evaluating species health, ecosystem integrity, and natural processes, offering a comprehensive framework for addressing the biodiversity crisis.
By Daniel Simons
We’ve all seen the ‘insect apocalypse’ meme that’s floating around the internet. The four-quadrant comic that depicts how a drive in the country has changed over the time.
In the first image, set decades ago, we have a driver peering through a windshield that looks like a Jackson Pollock painting, with a plague-like smattering of insects marring the driver’s view.
In the next image, set in the present day, there are a few eerie specks here and there. In the penultimate, no insects. In the final quadrant – no driver.
Biodiversity is life, and we can’t survive without it. That’s a problem because we’re currently in the middle of an ecological catastrophe.
According to WWF’s 2024 Living Planet Report, the world has seen a 73% average decline in the size of monitored wildlife populations, we have already breached the majority of the Earth’s planetary boundaries, and Earth Overshoot Day – the day when humanity’s consumption of natural resources exceeds what the planet can regenerate annually – has been edging earlier and earlier, with 2024’s Overshoot Day occurring on July 28.
While climate change has commanded significant news coverage, the biodiversity crisis presents an equally urgent existential threat.
The rapid loss of ecosystems and species, which are vital to maintaining healthy environments and underpin up to 50% of the global economy, threaten to lead to cascading impacts and eventually systemic collapse.
While the world has managed to rally around the climate crisis – setting collective goals like limiting warming to 1.5°C and transitioning to a ‘net-zero’ economy – the protection and restoration of the natural world has lacked a unified vision.
Until now.
The Nature Positive Initiative, The Nature Positive Forum and The Global Goal
The Nature Positive Initiative was founded by a coalition of 27 of the world’s largest nature conservation organisations, institutes, businesses and finance coalitions, all dedicated to ending the damage we are causing our planet, and ushering in a new era of regeneration.
The mission is to create a whole-of-society approach by aligning governments, businesses, financial institutions and civil society around a shared definition and vision of ‘Nature Positive’, and to ensure that there is more nature in the world in the future than there was in the recent past.
Launched in 2023, the project was established to ‘stimulate and support the world in addressing the accelerating biodiversity crisis’ and to ‘promote the integrity and implementation of the Nature Positive Global Goal.’
The Global Goal for Nature is defined as, “Halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030 from a 2020 baseline and setting the path for a full recovery of nature by 2050.”
The aspiration aligns with the UN’s Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which aims to halt human-induced species extinction, accelerate the sustainable use of biodiversity, promote the equitable sharing of benefits, and close the biodiversity finance gap.
The Nature Positive Initiative is supported by the Nature Positive Forum, a global community of institutions, organisations and companies committed to embracing and promoting the Global Goal for Nature.
How do we measure Nature Positive?
Tracking progress toward a Nature Positive world isn’t just about counting trees or tracking species – it’s about measuring the health of entire ecosystems and the life within them.
Using a 2020 baseline, the Nature Positive Goal takes an Earth systems approach to monitor the trajectory of nature across species, ecosystems and natural processes.
This includes:
Species
- Extent & abundance of species
- Extinction risk of species
- Genetic diversity
Ecosystems
- Extent of habitat
- Ecological integrity of the habitat
- Function of species in their ecosystems
Natural processes
- Hydrological integrity
- Sediment transport and the integrity of estuaries
- Migration patterns
- Carbon sequestration and storage
- Integrity of tidal zones
- Natural fire regimes
- Vegetative cover that supports rainfall patterns
According to the project’s creators, “The Nature Positive global goal is designed to be integrated with the SDGs and the climate goals of the Paris Agreement to create a coherent unified global approach of creating an Equitable, Nature Positive, Carbon Neutral (net zero) world.”
A brief history
The Nature Positive movement might be a recent development, but it has emerged in the context of a world increasingly aware of the pressing need to tackle the biodiversity crisis.
In 2020, 95 nations signed the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature, setting the stage for urgent action.
In 2021, G7 nations committed to the 2030 Nature Compact, and later that year the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures was established to help businesses assess and report on nature-related risks.
In 2022, 188 countries adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, and the goal of protecting 30% of the world’s land, freshwater and marine areas by 2030.
More recently, The World Economic Forum dubbed 2025 ‘the year of nature-positive finance’ and announced that they are currently developing a Nature Transition Plan Assessment Report to help businesses bring nature into the boardroom
A Nature Positive Australia
With Australia having the highest mammal extinction rate in the world, and our country being prone to devastating bushfires like the Black Saturday disaster, halting the destruction of our ecosystems and increasing resilience is crucial for our future.
The Government has previously committed to the High Ambition Coalition’s 30×30 targets – which aims to protect 30 percent of the country’s land and waters by 2030, announced a target of zero new extinctions, and released a Nature Positive Plan.
Australia has also taken steps to better measure and account for the economic value of nature.
The Government is currently working to develop better metrics for valuing natural assets and ecosystems, which will help a broad range of sectors to incorporate environmental considerations into their decision-making processes.
With the Australian Bureau of Statistics, they’ve released a paper outlining an approach to developing a National Ecosystem Accounts that will cover Australia’s land, freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems.
CSIRO is building a comprehensive hub of resources to help governments, the private sector and communities to assess and account for natural capital.
In an effort to accelerate the regeneration of Australia’s ecosystems and support biodiversity, the Australian Government also launched the Nature Repair Market – the world’s first regulated voluntary national scheme to enable participants to earn biodiversity credits.
At the Global Nature Positive Summit, which was held in October 2024 in Sydney, The Australian Government launched Nature Positive Matters – a platform to help business leaders collaborate, share best practices, and accelerate the transition to a nature-positive economy.
A Nature Positive future
Solving the biodiversity crisis is just as urgent as solving the climate crisis.
Now, thanks to the Nature Positive Initiative and the Global Goal for Nature, we have a clear vision for our collective future.
The Nature Positive movement is shifting the narrative, proving that economic progress and ecological health can reinforce, rather than undermine, each other.
Whether through legislation, corporate responsibility, or individual choices, the transition to a nature-positive world depends on our collective action.
If we get this right, nature won’t just recover – it will flourish.
