From climate to biodiversity: why and how to integrate nature into investment decisions?
Temperature targets, carbon budgets, transition plans: for a long time, climate change has focused most of the attention in terms of sustainable finance, and has become a political, economic and financial issue. Biodiversity, by contrast, has often remained in the shadows, perceived as a more diffuse, more complex issue. However, the erosion of life is now emerging as a major risk for the real economy and, by extension, for investment portfolios.
Published on 9 December 2025
The challenges: biodiversity, the "living infrastructure" of the economy
Biodiversity is life in all its richness in all their richness: genes, species, ecosystems and interactions. Climate can be seen as the "temperature" of the Earth system, and biodiversity as their "living infrastructure". Soils rich in organisms, healthy forests, functional wetlands and balanced oceans regulate the climate, capture carbon, absorb shocks and protect people communities.
This wealth is declining rapidly and scientists are sounding the alarm, just like for climate change. The richness of IPBES1 – the "IPCC of biodiversity" – highlights five major pressures: destruction and artificialisation of lands, overexploitation of resources, climate change, pollution, invasive invasive species. Where global warming comes from an accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the biodiversity crisis is the result of a combination of factors.
Ecosystems provide essential "services" free of charge: regulation of the local climate, water filtration, flood control, soil fertility, pollination, recycling of organic matter, not to mention food resources and raw materials. Numerous studies show that a significant part of GDP depends, directly or indirectly, on nature.
The challenge is twofold: reducing pressure on nature and adapting economic models to limited resources. Integrating biodiversity into investment strategies is becoming a condition for the sustainability of business models, in the same way as taking climate risks into account.
How to act: frameworks and data that are structured, on the model of the climate
For climate, the Paris Agreement sets a quantified target for limiting global warming, which is then set out in regulations, transition plans, commitments by financial actors and indicators (emissions, trajectories, carbon budgets). For biodiversity, the reference framework is the Kunming Montreal Agreement (COP 15, 2022). It is not limited to a single target, but to twenty-three objectives covering the main pressures identified by IPBES: protection and restoration of ecosystems, reduction of pollution, limitation of overexploitation, fight against invasive species, better integration of nature in economic and financial decisions. Where Paris sets a unique course for the climate, Kunming Montreal is drawing a multifactorial roadmap to halt the erosion of life.
This difference is major. The climate lends itself to being managed by an aggregated indicator, greenhouse gas emissions converted into CO2 equivalent. Biodiversity, on the other hand, cannot be reduced to a single unit of account: it covers a diversity of species, habitats and ecological functions, with very local impacts.
However, the climate dynamic has inspired the structuring of biodiversity finance. In France, Article 29 of the Energy and Climate Law was a pioneer in requiring financial actors to account for their risks, dependencies and impacts related to biodiversity, in addition to climate. At the European level, the CSRD2 directive strengthens non-financial reporting of large companies, explicitly integrating nature. At the international level, voluntary frameworks complete this foundation. TNFD3, based on the model of TCFD4 climate, provides a framework to identify, assess and disclose nature-related risks. SBTn5 is working developing targets aligned with planetary boundaries, like SBTi for climate.
Operational tools — ENCORE6 to map sectoral dependencies and impacts, or the Global Biodiversity Score to estimate an actor's net contribution to biodiversity loss or preservation — already offer indicators that can be used at the portfolio level. The data remains imperfect – incomplete, heterogeneous – but it is progressing quickly and is already sufficient to inform decisions.
How to act with your investments: avoid, reduce, restore
What can be done concretely when the methodologies are not fully stabilized? Here again, the experience of climate investment policies is enlightening: limiting exposure to the activities most incompatible with the Paris Agreement, supporting the decarbonization of portfolios, financing low- carbon solutions, using shareholder engagement as a lever for transformation.
For biodiversity, a similar logic can be deployed around the triptych "avoid, reduce, restore".
- Avoidance means not financing activities that cause irreversible damage to nature, such as uncontrolled deforestation or the massive use of particularly harmful pesticides. This is the equivalent, for biodiversity, of excluding fossil activities that are most incompatible with climate objectives.
- Reducing means initiating a transition of economic models to limit negative impacts on ecosystems: reduction of water consumption in areas under water stress, reduction of polluting discharges, slowing down land artificialization, etc. This transition concerns all sectors, in particular those with high biodiversity stake such as food, chemicals and consumption.
- Restoring means supporting the regeneration of degraded ecosystems by financing concrete solutions: reforestation and agroforestry, restoration of wetlands, rehabilitation of depleted soils, or technologies and business models that sustainably reduce the pressure on nature.
Shareholder engagement is a key lever: asking companies for more transparency on their impacts and dependencies on nature, encouraging the definition of objectives aligned with certain COP 15 targets, monitoring concrete progress indicators over time.
Conclusion: do not reproduce, on biodiversity, the delays in the climate
The history of climate action shows the costs of wait- and-see: waiting too long for perfect data has delayed action. The same trap awaits biodiversity. Today, the scientific diagnosis is clear, the international frameworks exist and the tools are improving rapidly. Rather than waiting for a complete methodological stabilization, it is better to integrate nature into investment decisions now, combining prudence and ambition.
As with the climate, investors have multiple motivations: regulatory requirements, risk management, personal convictions. This diversity explains both the gradual integration of biodiversity into investment policies and the rise of solutions to support the transition. It also marks the opening of a new field of differentiation between players: those who will meet the regulatory minimum requirements, and those who will see the preservation of biodiversity as a strategic lever for resilience and sustainable performance.
1. IPBES: Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
2. Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive
3.Taskforce on Nature Financial Disclosure
4.Taskforce on Climate Financial Disclosure
5. Science Based Targets Network
6. Exploring Natural Capital Opportunities, Risks and Exposure