COP17 in Yerevan exposed a widening gap between ambition for nature and action on the ground. The first global review of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) found that fewer than half of the national targets assessed by countries are on track. Governments agreed a pathway to accelerate implementation, but important questions, including future financing arrangements, remain unresolved. 

For business, this is no longer simply a biodiversity challenge. It is increasingly a question of resilience, investment, and growth. Participants reflected on the difficulty of applying ecological information across assets and value chains, securing internal investment, and coordinating action beyond company boundaries. There are encouraging signs. In ERM's 2026 Sustainability at a Crossroads research, nature-based solutions registered the largest positive shift in perceived impact and feasibility among 610 sustainability experts. However, accelerating the adoption of solutions and scaling them remains a challenge. 

That challenge extends well beyond the nature agenda. As COP31 gets underway, climate and nature risks increasingly converge across the same assets, supply chains, and landscapes. Businesses will need to make more connected decisions about both, while policy and finance need to create stronger conditions for investment. Yerevan highlighted five priorities for turning nature ambition into practical, investable action. 

1. What is needed to turn biodiversity commitments into action?

COP17 reinforced an uncomfortable reality: ambition for nature is still running well ahead of delivery. The global review warned that the 2030 targets will not be met without a rapid acceleration in implementation, while developed countries missed their commitment to mobilize at least $20 billion annually by 2025. COP17 agreed a post-2030 financial mechanism under COP governance, but deferred decisions on its structure until COP18 in 2028. 

But closing the nature finance gap is only part of the challenge. We also need to stop financing nature loss. A recent analysis of 134 national reports found that only 21 countries had identified harmful subsidies by the 2025 deadline. Additional conservation funding will have limited effect if much larger financial flows continue to incentivize activities that contribute to nature loss.  

For companies, this creates an uneven operating environment in which policy signals, funding, and implementation capacity vary by jurisdiction. Companies can act on commercially justified priorities while identifying where shared funding and policy reform are required. Aligning site and sourcing plans with national biodiversity strategies can help identify relevant partnerships and co-funding opportunities, provided programs remain grounded in local ecological and social needs. 

2. How can collective action and credible funding strengthen landscape resilience?

Corporate resilience cannot be separated from landscape resilience. A company may improve its own performance while remaining exposed to water scarcity, soil degradation, or habitat loss elsewhere in a catchment or sourcing region. These shared dependencies create a rationale for collective action and a financing challenge: the organization paying for an intervention may receive only part of its benefits. At Finance and Biodiversity Day, the European Central Bank's Frank Elderson cited research indicating that a once-in-a-century drought could put up to 24% of eurozone economic output at risk.  

Water stewardship offers an established model for coordinating action across shared catchments. ERM’s work supporting a multi-stakeholder dialogue in Mexico illustrates how companies, public authorities, and other local stakeholders can coordinate around shared water challenges.  

Companies should identify where exposure is concentrated, who shares it, and whether joint action is the most effective response. Credible programs require agreement on priorities, delivery responsibilities, funding, long-term management, and meaningful participation from Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Where interventions deliver multiple benefits, such as water regulation, habitat condition, and agricultural resilience, combining different funding sources may be appropriate, provided outcomes are supported by evidence and claims are not double counted. For example, catchment restoration could combine corporate funding for water resilience with public or philanthropic support for habitat and community benefits under a common delivery plan. 

Companies also need to distinguish their contribution to shared landscape outcomes from results directly attributable to their interventions. Collective action does not remove the need for clear responsibilities and credible monitoring.  

3. Connecting nature-related risks to financial decisions: What do companies need to consider?

Participants across corporate, banking, and insurance discussions described tangible consequences of nature-related risk: operational disruption, permitting delays, supply constraints, and changes in financial exposure. ECB analysis indicates that around three-quarters of eurozone area corporate lending goes to companies highly dependent on at least one ecosystem service. The challenge is translating that exposure into specific business decisions, while accounting for trade-offs.  

At ERM's session on natural capital and capital allocation, Ryan Asher and Lisa Mandle from Stanford's Natural Capital Alliance’s explored how natural capital metrics can inform investment decisions. Panelists from companies, banks, and development finance institutions described how nature dependencies can affect permits, operational continuity, credit assessments, and valuations, while pointing to persistent gaps in nature data and traceability.  

For capital allocation, companies need to explain how ecosystem change could affect cash flows, capital expenditure, asset performance, or risk, and how an intervention could alter that exposure. Ecological improvements, wider societal benefits, and financial value to the business should be distinguished, with assumptions, time horizons, and uncertainty made explicit and evidence proportionate to the decision. ERM's partnership with Natcap supports this by combining location-specific nature intelligence with strategy and implementation capabilities. 

A business primer shared by ERM and WBCSD at COP17 provides a practical approach: companies can identify how a nature dependency could affect business performance, translate that effect into financial terms, and compare the cost of taking action with the cost of inaction over an asset’s remaining life.  

4. What will it take to build demand for nature finance?

Biodiversity credit markets have advanced in integrity, verification, and market design since COP16, but establishing sustained demand remains a challenge. Robust methodologies and verification can build confidence in ecological outcomes, but buyers still require a clear rationale for funding them, including evidence of when verified ecological outcomes reduce business exposure. 

Companies could provide demand by funding outcomes in landscapes on which they depend, particularly where interventions support supply security, water resilience, or operational continuity. However, purchasing a verified outcome does not by itself demonstrate a reduction in the buyer's financial risk, nor does it substitute for addressing the company's own impacts.  

Credits are therefore one mechanism alongside direct investment, supplier incentives, public funding, co-investment, and blended finance. Companies should define the outcome they require and the rationale for funding it before selecting the mechanism, supported by independent verification, safeguards, and clear claims.

5. Why does framework alignment matter for business decisions?

Nature reporting frameworks are becoming more aligned, but interoperability creates value only if companies can reuse information across business decisions. Around COP17, the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) released LEAP 2.0, the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN) released Science-Based Targets for Nature 2.0, and the Nature Positive Initiative published its State of Nature Indicators and Metrics.  During the summit, the International Sustainability Standards Board opened consultation on a proposed Practice Statement on nature-related disclosures, building on existing disclosure requirements.  

An ERM working session with SBTN and TNFD on a beta interoperability tool developed by ERM explored where information can be reused across assessment, target-setting, and disclosure, and where further analysis is needed. Participants also emphasized that implementation requires ownership across procurement, operations, asset management, risk, and finance, supported by sustainability expertise. 

Companies should reuse a coherent evidence base across purposes, building on the certification, supplier engagement, and site monitoring already in place. Alignment does not remove the need for judgment: an enterprise disclosure, a site management plan, and landscape restoration program require different levels of detail and boundaries.  

A practical starting point is to identify where nature information should enter existing business processes, including investment approval, supplier selection, project design, and enterprise risk management. 

Priorities after Yerevan 

Yerevan reinforced that effective action on nature depends on three connected elements:  

  1. Evidence that identifies material dependencies and impacts;
  2. Investment cases that set out expected benefits and uncertainties in financial terms; and
  3. Delivery arrangements suited to the scale of the ecological challenge.  

Companies can build these into existing capital, sourcing, and operational decisions and, where risks are shared, into agreements with peers, public authorities, and communities. This approach also applies to the minerals required for the energy transition, as shown by ERM's nature-smart mining work supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. 

Progress after Yerevan will depend on whether nature information changes investment and operating decisions, shared risks lead to credible collective action, and funded interventions deliver demonstrable outcomes. Companies can act using the evidence and frameworks already available, while recognizing that delivery may require public support, stronger incentives, shared funding, and participation beyond company boundaries.