https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0553-5170
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Abstract
Nature Positive is a concept and approach that focuses on restoring and enhancing nature to improve biodiversity, ecosystem health, and nature’s benefits to humanity. While the Nature Positive movement is gaining significant momentum, with 90 countries currently signed on, achieving its ambitious vision will require engagement and contributions from all sectors of society. Notably, both governments and the private sector will need to align and embrace transformative change. A comprehensive understanding and implementation of the mitigation hierarchy as a foundation is a first step. This will require commitment, regulation, incentives and actions to both halt the drivers of biodiversity loss and support appropriate biodiversity restoration and protection along supply chains. While there is guidance on reporting, disclosure and target setting through frameworks such as Science-Based Targets Network (SBTN) and the Taskforce on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), there is a need for a clear pathway for companies, investors and policy makers for achieving Nature Positive. In this paper, we review and describe how the Nature Positive concept intersects with global and national-scale policy instruments and identify a set of key principles which can support companies on a Nature Positive pathway. Focusing initially on corporate action we explore how the mining sector can test the model for transforming company operations to achieve nature positive outcomes. We chose mining given its importance to the global economy, its impact on land, and its burgeoning role in the energy transition to a low carbon economy through the provision of critical minerals. The value of the contribution to this transition will be undermined if mining activities exacerbate the loss of biodiversity. We illustrate a conceptual approach that can guide the mining sector, including some key metrics that can be used to track and communicate progress toward nature positive goals. The mining sector has been testing and implementing a range of approaches such as No Net Loss, Net Positive Impact, biodiversity offsets, and lender standards over the last two decades. This provides an excellent foundation upon which to build nature positive ambition and outcomes. Ultimately, the guidance for Nature Positive can be adapted and replicated across other sectors and provide policy makers with the appropriate proof-points that can align on regulation so that robust business practices can drive Nature Positive outcomes with benefits for both people and nature.
Author summary
The mining sector is poised to play a key role in the energy transition through the provision of critical minerals. This is leading to concerns over the impacts on nature that could result from increased global mining activity. It is important to consider such risks and create systems that can not only reduce the sector’s impact on nature, but also foster its contribution to Nature Positive outcomes. Achieving success will depend on company commitments to mitigate and compensate their impacts on nature and then going beyond those commitments to invest in landscape-level conservation actions. This must also be accompanied by efforts to imbed nature in business decision making as well as in building more nature positive supply chains. The role of governments is essential in this process. Governments need to establish the enabling policies as well as the conservation targets to which companies can contribute and work closely with the sector to achieve the desired outcomes. By adopting nature -friendly business practices, the sector can help drive Nature Positive outcomes with benefits for both people and the environment.
Citation: Victurine R, Anstee S, Jones KR, Rainey H, DeGemmis A, Crowley H (2024) Nature Positive mining: Guidance for a critical transition. PLOS Sustain Transform 3(12): e0000142. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000142
Editor: Jose Carlos Báez, Spanish Institute of Oceanography: Instituto Espanol de Oceanografia, SPAIN
Received: June 29, 2024; Accepted: October 16, 2024; Published: December 11, 2024
Copyright: © 2024 Victurine et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript.
Funding: Funding for this research was provided by the Australia-based Climate and Environment Foundation as part of a grant (Grant Number 2307) provided to the Wildlife Conservation Society in support of WCS’s efforts to develop an initiative on nature positive mining. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
1. Background
The period after the end of the second world war marked the start of an era of economic growth and prosperity for a large part of global society. Since the 1970’s, more than a billion people have moved out of poverty, mainly through economic growth [1]. Unfortunately, this economic growth contributed to significant deleterious impacts on nature and has come at a cost to the natural systems and ecological integrity that underpins sustainable economic activity and human well-being. These impacts have also led to the aptly termed biodiversity crisis, characterized by the extinction of species at an alarming rate [2], and losses of natural ecosystem extent and integrity (composition, structure, function). Major drivers of this crisis include habitat destruction and degradation, pollution, overexploitation of species, climate change, and growth of invasive species [2,3]. This loss of nature is now recognized as having significant impacts on our economy and society, particularly through the loss of nature’s ability to provide ecosystem services such as provision of food and water, climate regulation, and protection from extreme weather [4,5].
In response to the growing awareness of society’s impacts on the environment, a global movement around the concept and goal of Nature Positive is rapidly developing. The global goal of Nature Positive is defined as ‘Halt and Reverse Nature Loss by 2030 on a 2020 baseline and achieve full recovery by 2050’ [www.naturepositive.org]. Nature Positive was first publicly communicated in a seminal paper produced by some of the world’s leading conservationists and non-government organisations (NGOs) [6]. It was published in the lead up to the 2022 Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) Conference of the Parties (COP) to inform actions and direction of the CBD process that resulted in the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) 2022–2030.
Early movers in some business sectors have adopted Nature Positive terminology to frame their environmental management and biodiversity conservation policy and activities. The Nature Positive Network [http://www.naturepositive.org/] indicates that 27 of the world’s largest nature conservation organizations, institutes, business and finance coalitions have come together to launch an initiative aimed at driving alignment around the definition, integrity and use of the term Nature Positive and supporting broader, longer-term efforts to deliver nature-positive outcomes. However, despite this growing level of support and excitement, there is concern among some key stakeholders with experience in the business and biodiversity space, that Nature Positive is a marketing buzz word and is being incorrectly used to rebadge or replace existing approaches to environmental management and or biodiversity conservation activities [7,8]. This is leading to concerns over the potential for greenwashing, including efforts to replace commitments to adherence to the mitigation hierarchy with Nature Positive claims, with proponents using Nature Positive to demonstrate environmental bona fides, without significant changes to their business models regarding impacts on nature. Without an appropriate framework or standards to define Nature Positive, the movement is unlikely to deliver the ambitious outcomes needed to tackle the biodiversity crisis.
This research investigates how to implement the Nature Positive framework, providing guidance for governments, companies and other stakeholders to effectively achieve and contribute to nature positive outcomes at a landscape scale, outlining approaches for success while avoiding potential pitfalls like greenwashing. We review key literature to identify principles and actions that underpin the design, development and implementation of activities necessary to transform business and integrate the real value of nature into business and economic models to achieve Nature Positive outcomes. We use the mining sector as an example to showcase the specific steps that businesses can take to begin designing and implementing Nature Positive actions.
2. Nature Positive goal
Nature Positive is a concept and approach that focuses on the safeguarding of the functioning of ecosystems, biomes, and related Earth system functions for a stable and resilient planet supporting all [9]. It goes beyond traditional conservation efforts, establishing strict no net loss/net gain (NNL/NG) and ecosystem protection targets that if adopted would address the impacts of economic investment across the full scope of business activities from direct footprint and across landscape and supply chains. No net loss is achieved when the impacts on biodiversity caused by a project are balanced or outweighed by measures taken to avoid and minimize impacts, to undertake on-site restoration, and finally to offset residual impacts so that no net loss remains. Where biodiversity gains exceed the loss, net gain is achieved. Nature Positive goes beyond project net gain impacts to expand conservation actions across landscapes, and within supply chains, while ensuring a just transition. In this way, Nature Positive seeks to generate a positive impact on nature by promoting actions that not only reduce the impacts on our environment but also protect and restore nature and secure benefits for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) so that nature and humans thrive [10].
The Nature Positive framework establishes ambitious goals that aim to immediately halt the decline in nature and reverse those trends toward a recovery that benefits both people and the planet. The level of ambition needed to achieve a nature-positive world is measured by three temporal objectives as depicted in Fig 1:
- Halt the decline of Nature using 2020 as the baseline
- Reversing Nature loss by 2030 to move toward recovery
- Full Recovery by 2050.
A Nature Positive goal establishes a north star to guide society’s efforts to arrest and restore biodiversity and nature loss. To do this, we need to build upon and advance the thinking and outcomes that have been achieved through previous global biodiversity policy goals. In addition, there needs to be a strong commitment by both the public and private sector to address drivers of biodiversity loss and conserve and restore nature by establishing appropriate conservation/nature targets with a commitment and plan to meet them. In this way, the Nature Positive goal will work alongside existing global environmental agreements, and chiefly with the Global Biodiversity Framework. While there are some differences in scope and terminology, the goals and targets of the GBF articulate a future that is clearly aligned with the Nature Positive goal, aiming for measurable benefits in species and ecosystem status, but also in nature’s benefits to people, which is also consistent with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
3. National policy and Nature Positive
The goals and targets outlined in the GBF create the overarching framework to guide and catalyse national policy. It is this jurisdictional policy and regulation that will ultimately determine the degree to which global goals are achieved. However, one of the important and innovative features of the GBF is that it also sets the ‘direction of travel’ for the private sector particularly on priorities around targets and disclosure.
Indications since COP15 demonstrate an increase in corporate and financial sector support for policy and guidance to protect nature, and in the coming years, the extent to which private sector action and ambition contribute to and complement national and jurisdictional ambitions will be critical in enabling transformational policy shifts and tangible outcomes for nature. The ambition of Nature Positive–given its transformational scope, requires more than ever this coherence between public and private policy and action. Business for Nature [11] describes six business-focused policy recommendations which governments can adopt to mainstream nature and create the legislative and policy framework for Nature Positive.
The policies recognize the importance of intact ecological areas and the need for governments to establish a level playing field by enabling, requiring and incentivizing businesses to actively participate in conservation and restoration of ecosystems at a landscape scale, while respecting the rights and practices of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities. Proposed policies support both the avoidance and reduction of impacts, respect for the boundaries of protected areas, and reform of perverse subsidies. In addition, there is a recognition that financial flows from the private sector need to support positive nature outcomes over the long-term, ensuring that actions consider local economies and social and cultural practices. To date, more than 1400 companies with revenues of over $7 trillion are calling for governments to adopt these policies now to reverse nature loss in this decade [www.businessfornature.org].
Growing public and private sector support of the Nature Positive ambition is evidenced by the more than 90 world leaders signing on to the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature, which calls for a nature-positive future to be achieved by 2030 [Fig 2], and 11 of the global Fortune 100 companies already outlining aspirations to contribute to nature positive [12]. Simultaneously, many countries have also passed legislation that sets some of the enabling policies needed to reverse loss of biodiversity and lay the foundation for a nature positive future. Examples of this include requirements for companies to follow the mitigation hierarchy and achieve either no net loss or net gain in biodiversity. Fig 2 demonstrates that many of the countries that have signed the Leaders Pledge already have established policies requiring application of the mitigation hierarchy or have mitigation guidance in place. These countries already have a foundation upon which to construct a Nature Positive pathway but need to do more.
Countries that have signed the Leaders pledge for Nature (pink outline) and have either regulatory requirements for biodiversity offsets and compensation (dark green), or provisions to enable voluntary biodiversity offsets and compensation (light green). The list of countries with mitigation policies includes those with some kind of legislation or pending legislation, based upon best available information [13,14]. Country boundaries are tken from gadm.org.
Despite the ambition, there remain several challenges in achieving policy coherence and moving investment toward Nature Positive. Companies may balk at regulation and lobby governments to reduce or soften requirements to ensure access to resources or lower investment costs. Governments themselves may find that the added cost from following net gain objectives negatively impacts both public and private investment decisions.
Governments may also invoke national security issues as a reason to soften net gain requirements to allow development in sensitive areas–something that may arise in the mining sector as the demand for transition minerals increases. Lack of capacity to oversee and ensure compliance, or political pressure to ease enforcement, can also lead to biodiversity loss, as less attention is paid to avoidance and there is limited follow-up to ensure that the level of investment required by companies to achieve net gain is adequate. In addition, a Nature Positive commitment requires that companies consider how to avoid and minimize impacts on sensitive and intact areas. This means going well-beyond commitments to avoid World Heritage sites, for example, and requires assessing how impacts will affect all high-integrity areas regardless of protection status. Addressing these challenges will require commitments from, as well as collaboration among companies, governments (including donor governments), and financial organizations to establish and support the programs and systems that lay the foundation for the adoption and implementation of Nature Positive policies. Civil society will also need to push for the needed transformation.
4. A Nature Positive and mining model
Implementing the ambition of Nature Positive involves both broad cross-sectoral action as well as a need for sector specific actions. Already there is some guidance available for sectors through the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the World Economic Forum. In this paper we focus on the mining sector as an important ‘first mover’ in the Nature Positive space. In this paper we focus on company based commercial mining. However, we do recognise the issues and significance associated with Artisanal Small- Scale Mining (ASM) and will be seeking to addresses ASM in future work given the importance of addressing such activities at the landscape level to secure Nature Positive outcomes. There are three key reasons why this mining sector focus is important and why the potential exists to move toward Nature Positive.
- it has significant direct and indirect impacts on Nature
- it plays a major role in the energy transition to a low carbon economy through the supply of energy transition and critical minerals, and.
- it has a history of testing different approaches to mitigating and compensating for impacts on nature, such as establishing and securing new conservation sites, supporting community-level income generation programs, and financing protected area conservation.
The mining sector has a global operational footprint of more than 66,000 km2 of land [15], and an even greater indirect impact on ecosystems and communities through a wide array of associated infrastructure for processing, operations, staff, transportation, and logistics etc. [16]. Approximately 8% of global mining areas coincide with Protected Areas (PAs), 7% with Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) and 16% with remaining “wild” areas, with mining impacting areas of high ecological integrity [17]. With the demand for transition minerals to address climate change, future production is expected to change drastically. According to the International Energy Agency, reaching net-zero globally by 2050 would result in an increase in demand for minerals of 4–6 times by 2040, with even steeper demand for key commodities such as lithium (8 times), graphite (7 times), and nickel (7 times) [18].
As mining expands, the threats to species, intact areas, and the ecosystem services upon which people depend, will increase, and efforts will be required to avoid and minimize those threats. These concerns take on particular importance given the potential impact on indigenous peoples and local communities. A recent study found that more than half of energy transition mineral mining projects were located on or near the lands of Indigenous peoples [19]. This points to the importance of working with industry and government to transform the way the sector does business and working with it to adopt a Nature Positive approach that includes addressing social and human rights issues, ensuring the free, prior and informed consent of affected people, as well as effective collaboration with IPLCs.
At the same time, the mining industry has a long history of exploring the application of practices that seek to limit the impact on, and the delivery of benefits to nature, with varying results that can inform a nature positive model. The openness to innovate in support of managing impacts is valuable, but the value of this contribution will be significantly undermined if the extraction of critical minerals continues to exacerbate or even accelerate biodiversity loss through mining activities and the associated supply chains. While some mining companies are implementing compensatory activities, most are yet to truly understand how they can move toward becoming Nature Positive. As such, it is urgent to work with mining companies to integrate Nature Positive Principles into business models and begin applying them on the ground.
4.1. Nature Positive principles
Identifying key principles and guidance for business to navigate a Nature Positive pathway, involved conducting a search in Google using the keywords Nature Positive [search dates May1st—August 31st, 2023]. From a rapid review of approximately 50 papers, we identified three cross sector reports that were particularly relevant for this analysis: the European Union Business and Biodiversity Platform 2022 [20], the UK Business and Biodiversity Forum 2022 [21] and the IUCN IMEC working group 2023 [22]. These were selected because they each looked specifically at actions and principles for businesses wishing to move toward becoming Nature Positive.
From these reports, we synthesised 10 key principles that are essential for any mining company to transform its business model to be Nature Positive (Table 1). The first three principles are of particular importance as they may require new approaches that have not been undertaken to date in the sector, across the company and at individual sites. The principles provide guidance and a framework that companies can adapt to chart their path toward Nature Positive and they form the basis for the development of a Nature Positive industry standard.
4.2. Achieving Nature Positive
Fig 3 outlines a conceptual approach to understanding the different scopes of action and influence that are needed for a Nature Positive ambition. This ‘nested approach’ means that each level of action and outcomes supports and builds on the next. This does not need to be a sequential process as work within each scope can be done concurrently. Specifically, to achieve Nature Positive outcomes, mining companies must consider their impacts and dependencies on nature (i) in and around operational sites; (ii) in the landscape and region around operations; (iii) in supply chains; and (iv) through corporate and economic transformation to change business and economic models [Fig 3]. In this nested approach the operational mitigation, restoration and compensation (centre or first circle) sits within (not separate to) regional conservation action (second circle) offering a pathway for mining operations to achieve Nature Positive in a typical scenario, where mining is occurring in landscapes of ongoing biodiversity decline driven by non-mining human impacts. Regional or landscape actions can be identified and implemented to restore degradation and support efforts to address the causes of nature loss as part of overall project investment. This is further nested within broader corporate relationships (supply chains) and policies which focus on protecting nature across all company operations (two outer circles).
Adopting nature positive principles from the outset of project planning allows companies to explicitly focus on reducing impacts on nature as the foundation upon which to build restorative and conservation actions. Such practices can foster innovation in design, stakeholder engagement, and implementation to achieve of Nature Positive outcomes.
4.3. The mitigation hierarchy
Several of the programs and activities that must be implemented to achieve a Nature Positive outcome may not be entirely new to the mining industry even with the more ambitious goal for Nature Positive setting a much higher level of engagement. For more than a decade, companies have made some level of commitment to NNL/NG (or Net Positive Impact in some circles) on biodiversity, although extent and scale of measurable outcomes seem to vary. In a transformation to Nature Positive, the operation must at least achieve the goal of NNL/NG of biodiversity for its direct and indirect operational impacts. Full adherence to the Mitigation Hierarchy within the company’s direct operations is a sine qua non to build towards Nature Positive claims [Fig 4]. The mitigation hierarchy is a decision-making tool that has become common practise globally with the aim of preventing and remediating environmental impacts from project developments. It requires developers to first and foremost to avoid impacts wherever possible. Where impact avoidance is not possible, developers are required to minimize the project’s impacts, then to restore affected areas and, finally, offsetting any residual project impacts through offsite restoration and or conservation actions [23]. A complete methodology for the mitigation hierarchy is detailed in the International Finance Corporations Performance Standard 6: Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Management of Living Natural Resources [24] and Guidance Note 6 [25].
When applying the mitigation hierarchy, it is critical that companies place a strong focus on the avoidance step, as it can deliver the largest benefit for biodiversity, generally at a lower cost and is often inadequately prioritized early in project design [23,26]. Avoidance activities could include revising development locations to avoid high-integrity ecosystems or areas holding threatened species, changing development plans to use lower impact techniques (e.g. reducing road width, and co-locating linear infrastructure). Notably IFC’s 2019 Guidance Note [25] emphasises:
Avoidance of impacts is sometimes the only means to prevent irreplaceable loss of biodiversity or associated ecosystem services; the emphasis on avoidance in the mitigation hierarchy should thus be proportional to the irreplaceability and vulnerability of the affected biodiversity and/or ecosystem service.
While avoidance is fundamental, restoration also plays an important role in the mitigation hierarchy and has relevance when aiming to deliver net gain in biodiversity, as effective restoration can deliver significant biodiversity uplift. The Society for Ecological Restoration [27] provides useful guidance for how such restoration should be implemented. Finally, offsets should only be used as a last resort for residual project impacts and should be undertaken in accordance with the principles outlined in the IUCN’s Biodiversity Offsets Policy [28]. Importantly, offsets should be explicitly aligned with jurisdictional biodiversity targets, rather than set relative to a baseline trajectory of biodiversity decline [29]. This approach is consistent with international goals aimed at supporting governments to mainstream biodiversity into all relevant policies, including key regulations for extractive activities.
The GBF goals that overall ecological integrity, connectivity, and resilience will be enhanced by 2050 through improved avoidance (Target 1), active conservation (Target 3), and active restoration measures for existing degraded ecosystems by 2030 are also consistent with the preventative and remediation components of the mitigation hierarchy framework. Such spatially explicit targets are complemented by targets that require governments to mainstream biodiversity into all relevant policies, including key regulations for extractive activities. In this way, the GBF attempts to triangulate this problem with multiple “backstops”–empowering individual actors to contribute to the GBF through, for example, specific, site-based conservation or restoration efforts, while empowering governments to make mutually reinforcing policy changes at the sectoral level for certain types of firms or practices.
4.4. Landscape level restoration and conservation
Achieving a Nature Positive outcome at a mining operation requires not only full application of the mitigation hierarchy to achieve NNL/NG for biodiversity at the site level, but also engagement with external stakeholders and experts who will be better placed to identify regional conservation issues and develop and implement conservation activities targeting the pressure on regional biodiversity. This would require private sector companies in the same landscape to work together, share infrastructure, and take responsibility for financing reasonable shares of the landscape conservation costs as part of their Nature Positive actions.
Some companies are already taking a variety of actions that provide landscape conservation benefits. Ambatovy in Madagascar supported national conservation priorities by leaving parts of ore deposits in the ground to protect important forest areas, creating and funding a new protected area, and implementing community-based livelihoods projects that contributed to both conservation and improved livelihoods [30]. Other companies have made efforts to acquire land in excess of their footprints to establish conservation areas. Although these examples are not representative of the entire sector, nor do they meet Nature Positive criteria, there is potential to build on these experiences to contribute Nature Positive goals. Similarly, the role of government is essential in defining how Nature Positive outcomes and targets can be achieved across the landscape, creating the enabling environment (e.g. policies and the regulations) that will spur the required transformation. Mining operations should therefore engage and collaborate with government and community organisations to:
- Identify the drivers of biodiversity loss in the region where the operation is based.
- Establish landscape level conversation goals and specific evidenced-based targets required to achieve the desired conservation goals (see section below on targets).
- In collaboration with the relevant scientific experts, relevant government agencies, and local and indigenous communities, delineate the appropriate spatial extent or scale within which conservation activities will be undertaken.
- Negotiate and reach agreement with government, other companies operating in the landscape, indigenous communities and other stakeholders on their specific roles and responsibilities in addressing the drivers of biodiversity loss and achieving the agreed conservation goals–Government has a role here in leading negotiations, while lenders may also weigh in.
- Identify those investments which go beyond what would be required to secure at least a no net loss of biodiversity and determine which of those activities, when funded, would make the greatest contribution to achieving targets. Some of these activities will involve implementation by a variety of stakeholders to improve land management on community and individual land holdings; to protect and manage ecosystem services that benefit local people, to contribute to the creation and management of new and existing protected areas, among other conservation focused and livelihood activities. Once programs are defined, financing and investment in conservation actions need to be secured over the long-term, preferably in perpetuity, to ensure targets are met.
- Develop and implement appropriate financial mechanisms to enable government, indigenous communities, and other stakeholders to access funds and undertake the landscape scale programs and activities to achieve the conservation goals and,
- In collaboration with government, indigenous communities and other stakeholders convene and resource an external, independent panel of experts to monitor and verify the outcomes of the landscape scale conservation programs and activities.
These approaches are consistent with many of the principles outlined in Table 1, especially those that focus on a landscape approach, collective effort, the involvement of stakeholders, and the need to focus on specific targets toward Nature Positive. The design of these programs should be such that they are able to materially and proportionally contribute to addressing landscape level conservation and livelihood needs, and there are examples that demonstrate the opportunities for improved landscape actions, from efforts to adopt improved practices to reduce pollution and land degradation, to actions focused on collaboration with NGOs to fund the protection of priority conservation areas and the engagement with local communities, creating incentives to manage their land for conservation outcomes. Minimally, they must also deliver a net gain for biodiversity within that landscape by meeting established priority conservation targets, as a minimum requirement to meet Nature Positive criteria. Ideally these goals and targets would be consistent with those established at the state, national and international levels to meet goals under the GBF, and as such contribute to Nature Positive outcomes.
Design and implementation of landscape conservation programs is beyond the capacity of any one societal sector, and landscape plans that foster improved coordination and collaboration among different regional players from multiple sectors will be critical to delivering Nature Positive outcomes. Political leadership from national and local governments, alongside substantial community engagement and technical support from the scientific community will support progress on landscape conservation and deliver local economic benefits essential for achieving the desired nature positive outcomes.
4.5. Supply chains and business model and culture transformation
In the mining sector, the mitigation hierarchy is well understood, and attention is growing also on the need for landscape scale conservation efforts beyond immediate direct operations. However, within the mining sector less attention has been paid to the necessary transformation of supply chains and business culture. Nature positive outcomes will require that companies understand their full value chains and expand their actions to address both upstream and downstream supply chain impacts, including recycling and engagement with downstream companies and purchasers such as the automotive industry. Antwi et al. 2022 [31] indicate that when mining companies engage on eco-innovative practices such as using environmentally friendly inputs, undertaking internal recycling of inputs, and are efficient with the quantities of inputs used, they are likely to record significant increases in social, economic, and environmental performance. Exploring these supply chain opportunities to optimize their contribution to nature positive goals represents an important step in a company’s transition.
Fortunately, mines typically have relatively short and transparent supply chains, with a limited number of operators, compared to industries like food or textiles with complex and often opaque supply chains. Realizing a Nature Positive goal will also depend on actions across the company and integration of the Nature Positive principles within companies’ systems and policies. The Board of Directors needs to endorse the company’s Nature Positive goals and ensure that those approaches are mainstreamed throughout the company. Some important new legal opinions on the duties of Directors in managing Nature risk are setting the stage for Board level oversight and engagement on companies’ commitments and actions around Nature [32].
Managers increasingly need to be held accountable for meeting nature positive objectives, with established nature positive performance indicators. As part of sustainability efforts, companies have created biodiversity ambitions, and NNL/NG policies, only to have them fall short of expectations as they often are de-prioritized. Moving nature to a top priority and maintaining this focus and commitment underpins the necessary cultural transformation. Some extractive companies have already begun to establish indicators for their management to comply with net gain requirements established under Biodiversity Action Plans. As a result, managers are supportive of nature-related investments that can deliver results. Building such systems into mining business operations will be an important first steps in this overall cultural transformation.
5. Mine site Nature Positive metrics and monitoring
As companies move to design and implement Nature Positive actions, measuring progress and outcomes is crucial. Work is underway through Science Based Targets for Nature (SBTN) and the Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosure (TNFD) to identify the type of metrics and indicators that are helpful in tracking progress on impact and dependencies on Nature and, in turn, progress towards Nature Positive. A key enabler for the Nature Positive pathway is the radical advancements in Nature Tech and how it can now contribute to both accelerating the implementation of nature-based solutions (NbS) as well as efficiently set baselines and track change over time to assess biodiversity abundance and functionality.
Additionally, over the last three years much research and development has gone into measurement and articulation of biodiversity uplift particularly as part of the emerging field of biodiversity credits. These developments, along with science-based testing from the academic and conservation practitioner community, provide valuable insights into the best metrics, indicators and measurement frameworks at different spatial scales. The power of the Nature Positive ambition is that it requires a holistic measurement of ecological integrity–the ecosystem’s composition, structure, and function–which will link global efforts on biodiversity with those on climate and health. It will not be enough to measure only a unit of biodiversity (e.g. species or ecosystem area) to track Nature Positive.
A key consideration when applying metrics for nature is the scale of measurement, as truly assessing nature positivity requires measuring changes in ecological integrity both at and beyond the direct footprint of a mine site. The progressive implementation of mitigation policies at multiple scales (e.g. development bank performance standards, national policies) has promoted the design of a range of systems for measuring biodiversity at the direct footprint scale [33]. Most of these metric systems rely on detailed, field-based monitoring of vegetation attributes, and comparison of attributes to a predefined high-integrity reference state. Such metrics are useful and are widely applied tools to measure direct project impacts, but their ability to measure the wider changes (e.g. landscape scale, supply-chain scale) is limited.
For mining, assessing the broad-scale changes associated with a Nature Positive commitment will require going beyond measurement of direct project impacts—often done using the metrics outlined above—to measurement of ecological integrity across the wider ecosystem, landscape, jurisdiction, or supply shed in which a business operates. Because of this large geographical scope, associated metrics will likely make use of evolving remote-sensing techniques which increasingly enable assessment of ecological integrity at scale. These approaches take several forms, but generally aim to either measure human pressures that degrade nature, inferring loss of ecological integrity where pressures are high, or to measure/model aspects of ecological integrity directly, for example by measuring vegetation structure or spatially modelling species abundance. Companies may also make use of existing frameworks for evaluating ecosystem status, such as the Red List of Ecosystems [34,35]. While Red List of Ecosystem assessments are generally produced by governments or NGOs, companies could build on and update such assessments for the ecosystems they operate within, using Red List Indices to track ecosystem extent and integrity over time [36]. Similarly, the scale of considering metrics across a supply shed may benefit from using metrics under development by SBTN and TNFD which seek to communicate corporate and portfolio-scale risk.
In many cases, field-metrics and remote sensing approaches can be combined to generate useful measurements across multiple scales. A mining company might monitor biodiversity offsets using field-based measurements of key integrity variables, while also using broad- scale metrics to assess changes in ecological integrity across the wider landscape or jurisdiction where it operates, for example by measuring overall forest integrity using the Forest Landscape Integrity Index [37] or assessing rangeland condition by measuring fractional vegetation cover [38]. When using such metrics, it will be essential that companies quantify their impact using robust experimental design and modern impact evaluation [39] which can help to comprehensively evaluate the causal effects of actions taken by a company (as done for Ambatovy mine in Madagascar) [40]. Even with such techniques it will still be difficult to assess proportional contribution/attribution of various actors in the landscape to changes in ecological integrity across large scales, but they provide a useful starting point for robust evaluation of Nature Positive progress.
Developing and applying ecological integrity metrics will be useful for Nature Positive commitments, and combined with detailed site-based information, will also be key to tracking progress towards targets, goals and risk mitigation under other frameworks such as the Global Biodiversity Framework, SBTN and TNFD. Linking Nature Positive measurement by individual companies to these broader agreements, for example through use of the Red List of Ecosystems Indices that are part of the GBF monitoring framework, will provide valuable win-wins on both monitoring and target achievement for both the public and private sectors and will also create powerful examples of the outcomes that can be achieved through aligning ambition.
6. The way forward
This paper provided a broad outline for helping the mining sector consider and design their pathway toward Nature Positive. This is still early days and, as noted, there will be important new future guidance emerging even while the robust debate on what constitutes Nature Positive continues. However, what is clear is that achieving Nature Positive involves moving beyond a business-as-usual approach, and, in fact, goes beyond what would be considered best practice today.
A commitment to Nature Positive is not necessarily offering a ‘contribution’ to a Nature Positive world. Such contributions should already form part of a company’s NNL/NG gain business model are certainly helpful as part of the ‘nested’ approach to scaled actions for Nature Positive outcomes. Much more is needed. Mining companies, as with other companies, will have to raise the bar and meet new standards to be able to claim they are Nature Positive and ultimately obtain a licence to operate in a world demanding increased attention to the conservation of nature.
For the mining industry a fundamental requirement will be ensuring that NNL/NG of biodiversity has been achieved across their operations. Nature Positive requires demonstrating that companies have gone beyond compliance with existing laws and best practice standards. Focusing on only project level impacts will not be sufficient. A broader regional or landscape approach will need to be adopted with companies working closely with governments to set goals and targets toward nature positive outcomes. Achieving nature positive will require several ingredients beyond a simple corporate commitment.
Governments need to develop and enforce regulations and set targets so that companies can better understand what is expected at a jurisdictional level. Governments, with support from companies, will need to plan better at the landscape scale so that investment are made both to address cumulative impacts across companies, but also explore ideas like co-investment in infrastructure, or priority investments in nature that go beyond net gain and deliver on government targets. Moreover, meeting Nature Positive goals will require companies to work with government and civil society to jointly plan activities and programs in the landscape that consider biodiversity, social and cultural issues.
Achieving Nature Positive outcomes will be challenging, and some questions remain to be resolved around supply chain responsibility and accountability across supply chains and within complex landscapes. However, there is a strong framework to guide companies in their initial steps toward nature positive. With growing demand for transition and critical minerals, there is significant value for the mining sector to act quickly to showcase this new level of commitment as a robust contributor to global biodiversity and nature conservation goals and set the stage for nature positive actions.
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