The Proteus Partnership develops its “Every Job is a Nature Job” series, with actionable guidance on how different job roles within companies can integrate nature into their processes and decision-making. 

Without nature, businesses across the globe would be unable to operate. The production of goods, from electric cars to chocolate, relies on natural resources and ecosystem services, such as precious minerals and agricultural commodities like cocoa. Actions to improve the sustainability of business activities are most effective when embedded across the entire business. UNEP-WCMC's Proteus Partnership highlights that every job is a nature job and is developing a series of guides that enable different business functions to integrate nature into their decision-making. They provide companies with practical guidance on how business can empower nature-driven decision-making today, to build a resilient economy for tomorrow.  

The Proteus Partnership is a collaboration between UNEP-WCMC and businesses that has worked for over 20 years to embed biodiversity science, data and policy into decision making.  Proteus helps companies to recognize their responsibilities for nature and manage their relationships with biodiversity.  “Every Job is a Nature Job” builds on extensive engagement with companies and draws insights from leading businesses to help non-experts to understand and take action on nature. 

The upcoming Nature Action Dialogues happening on 25-26 March in Cambridge, will provide opportunities for businesses to further explore the "Every Job is a Nature Job" concept through workshop discussions, business case studies and peer learning. Access more information on the Nature Action Dialogues, including agenda, speakers and registration details, here. 

Businesses depend on nature 

All businesses depend on nature, either directly or throughout their value chains. All GDP depends on nature, and over half of global GDP is moderately or highly dependent on the natural world. Yet nature is in decline. Ecosystem services are facing major challenges. For example, 10 per cent of global economic output has been lost as a result of land degradation. Business and biodiversity are interconnected. Degraded ecosystems will struggle to provide the services on which the economy depends, such as food production or extraction of critical minerals for renewable technologies. Without these, supply chains will lose resilience as production is threatened by biodiversity risk. For example, the production of car batteries relies on lithium, with its extraction dependent upon stable water access. Disruption to water supply disrupts business. 

Businesses can take concrete action to protect nature  

Understanding nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities is now embedded in the business landscape through various nature-related disclosure frameworks and standards. These include mandatory corporate sustainability reporting requirements which ensure all major companies disclose their environmental risks. Beyond legal requirements, companies can better track and mitigate nature-related risks by also engaging with voluntary initiatives. Disclosure practices highlight key risks and opportunities across business functions and activities. However, it can be hard to know where to begin in transforming individual job roles within a business, as their environmental connections may not be immediately obvious. 

The “Every Job is a Nature Job” series addresses this gap, providing guidance for integrating nature considerations into processes and decision-making across different business functions. The actionable guides are informed by interviews with businesses and draw on UNEP-WCMC's expertise to provide a set of steps to support business functions at each stage of their nature journey.  

Proteus provided procurement professionals with expert guidance 

The procurement brief outlines the steps professionals with this function can take to support nature. Individuals working in a business's procurement department deal with the buying of goods and services for production. The brief provides these professionals with guidance on how they can consider nature when deciding on what to purchase. Actions in the guide range from ensuring contracting processes include nature-related criteria, to understanding industry standards.  

The brief is now available to read here in either English, French or Spanish. 

New guidance for business development professionals 

The business development brief provides recommendations to professionals who want to ensure that nature is accounted for when reviewing opportunities to develop and grow their company. Guidance is provided on how business developers can engage with specialists and stakeholders to guarantee nature-related risks are considered and mitigated, and how to ensure the consideration of nature is incorporated throughout the final decision-making process. 

“Decisions made by business development professionals today shape a company's impact for years to come. Through this guidance, we help companies develop in harmony with nature by supporting them to integrate nature into the business development process. Our guidance provides specific actions business developers can take to make decisions to safeguard biodiversity”.

Elspeth Grace, Associate Programme Officer, UNEP-WCMC 

What’s next in the Every Job is a Nature Job series? 

The next instalment in the "Every Job is a Nature Job" series will be a brief for social engagement officers, providing sustainability guidance to professionals that conduct outreach and engage different communities across society. Social engagement officers must consider both nature and people in their outreach with communities, and when working with leadership on shaping business strategy.  This brief will cover guidance on these tasks, addressing issues from public engagement to representation. 

Additionally, a brief for nature leads – those with the task of integrating nature across the entire organization – is due to be launched later this year. This brief will provide guidance on how to synergize recommendations provided across the ‘Every Job is a Nature Job’ series to enable a nature-related transformation of operations across a company. This involves support for nature leads on approaching leadership with their recommendations. Proactively integrating nature into company-wide policy, by engaging leadership, helps ensure resiliency across operational sites and wider value chains.  

Mitigating biodiversity risks at the at the get-go rather than retrofitting solutions after damage has occurred will always deliver more benefits to nature, people, and business. 

Explore the procurement and business development guidance. For more insights to these briefs, and related topics, explore the agenda for the upcoming Nature Action Dialogues. Access the Proteus website for more information on the Proteus Partnership and stay up to date with our socials for updates on upcoming briefs from the “Every Job is a Nature Job” series. 

For more information, contact Bálint at balint.ternyik@unep-wcmc.org.

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