Narratives on nature: How CSOs can persuade stakeholders to embrace their next priority

In brief:

• Chief Sustainability Officers (CSOs) can position nature conservation as integral to achieving climate objectives, leveraging existing groundwork and highlighting the intersectionality of nature and climate crises.
• By appealing to emotions and values, CSOs can effectively engage stakeholders from various departments, aligning CEOs, CFOs, COOs, product leaders and others with the nature agenda through tailored messaging that emphasizes both risks and opportunities.
• Defining nature’s significance within the organization, addressing stakeholder fatigue and leveraging existing infrastructure fosters internal buy-in and operationalizes a company’s nature strategy, ultimately enhancing resilience, innovation and long-term value creation.

Sustainability teams have a lot on their plates. Feeling the heat from investors, consumers and employees to go further and faster with climate action, Chief Sustainability Officers (CSOs) are hard at work building momentum internally, ushering and encouraging teams across departments to buy into their climate strategy. 

Now, CSOs have an equally important priority to take on: nature. The rapid decline of our natural ecosystems is a major risk for business, with companies already experiencing costly disruptions due to nature loss. The business case for taking action to protect and enhance nature and biodiversity is clear — business needs nature to thrive for its activities to thrive.  

The financial world has taken note and as a result of investor alarm, policymakers and regulators are making moves. Companies will soon be required to describe their nature-related impacts, dependencies and related financial risks. But most department heads have yet to grasp this, which is why convincing their peers to embrace nature is the CSO’s next challenge.  

Here’s how you can steer internal stakeholders on the road to a nature-positive world as CSO. 

Nature as a core path, not a sidetrack, to climate goals

While the prospect of mobilizing internal stakeholders around ‘another’ crisis might seem daunting, the interconnectedness of the climate and nature emergencies actually make them one in the same challenge. As such, much of the groundwork for addressing nature loss has already been laid as part of corporate climate efforts. And where companies are failing to deliver on their climate ambitions, nature offers answers. CSOs can frame tackling the nature crisis as an opportunity to get themselves out of their climate ‘rut’.  

WWF and Boston Consulting Group’s analysis on the potential benefits and risks to nature of rapidly shifting to clean energy systems is a good case in point. Our ecosystems act as natural carbon sinks, absorbing large quantities of greenhouse gas emissions. Peatlands represent only 3% of the Earth’s surface, but source nearly one third of soil carbon— and mangroves can store up to 50% more carbon than tropical forests. Conserving and restoring our lands and oceans is essential to limiting carbon emissions and adapting to the impacts already being felt.  

As numerous UN bodies and NGOs point out: Climate objectives won’t be met if nature loss is not reversed, but many nature interventions are climate-supportive, and vice-versa. Integrating nature into sustainability strategies gives companies the opportunity to tackle challenges from a new, more effective angle. Nature serves as the bridge between all environmental areas – from climate to water, biodiversity to plastics and beyond.  

There’s no hiding place on this issue; it’s now just as important for companies to integrate nature-based strategies, actions and plans – and CSOs will need to secure buy-in from the same colleagues who might have been hard to win over on climate action, or sustainability in general. 

How to speak to stakeholders – from the CMO to CFO

The good news is that in speaking about nature, food and living creatures you can appeal to emotions in a deeper way than when discussing carbon. More and more individuals are passionate about saving our natural world. Nature speaks to our human values, whether that’s recreational or spiritual, making it easier for CSOs to connect with stakeholders in a positive way. 

As you’ve learned in developing your climate strategy, executing a similar plan for nature will require building a team of internal champions. 

• Your CEO needs to fully understand how the business interacts with nature, its key dependencies on biodiversity, how the organization will fail to meet its net zero targets without fully addressing nature – and how doing so will propel the business to lead on climate action. Since your CEO will need to secure buy-in among board members, connecting the dots between nature degradation and increased operating costs, exposure to risks (physical and reputational), as well as the opportunities on the flipside will help make the case.  

• Your CFO must appreciate the wealth of incoming policy and regulation that asks your business to translate nature impacts into financial terms, including the exposure to risk and how the business will reduce those risks, ultimately future-proofing its activities. To avoid overwhelm, help your CFO see that nature reporting (TNFD) follows a very similar approach to climate reporting (TCFD).
   
• Your COO needs to see that while climate strategies tend to be more top-down (increase energy efficiency, change product designs, install low-carbon equipment, etc.), nature actions call for a local lens. This requires deeper, on-the-ground stakeholder engagement to really understand the intricacies of specific sites or facilities, for example – and a strategy that is much more tailored to operational realities. In return, the operations department gets to be the sustainability hero, with increased visibility into the contribution these teams are already making to environmental goals.
   
• Your product and R&D leaders must understand the opportunities nature-related products offer (e.g., waterless processes), providing the chance to be an innovator in the market. 

• Your procurement leader will know that supplier risks are growing. Many of these are connected to nature (e.g., sourcing crops from water-stressed regions, deforestation impacts). Addressing nature risks at source through increased traceability can enhance resilience in the supply chain, helping to stabilize and ensure security of supply. Help them understand the physical risks that could lead to cost increases and collaborate as thought partners to develop supplier engagement strategies.

• Your CMO needs to feel inspired by the storytelling potential associated with nature issues which are often much more tangible and people-centered. If leveraged well, nature can be the next big thing in consumer marketing. Just as many brands have used climate awareness to build trust and connection with customers, marketers have a chance to extend that relationship further by exploring hyper-local issues in a way that brings about lasting change in local communities. 

• Your CHRO has a critical role to play in ensuring change is operationalized — and they shouldn’t be overlooked. After all, change management is a determining factor in the success or failure of organizational transformation. And with a heightened focus on local teams as part of nature interventions, HR will have the opportunity to strengthen company culture and sense of belonging across its sites. Your CHRO will also be instrumental in ensuring the business is equipped with the talent required for the sustainability transformation and will provide counsel on the right incentives to utilize across teams. 

The way sustainability teams are structured will also be a determining factor in your engagement success. There are some emerging examples of firms that have established separate climate and nature teams, both reporting into CSOs, each with their own targets, approaches and action plans. Remember: nature projects help make your carbon strategy more operational. Similarly, climate action can spur activity on nature and biodiversity. If you are to make the case that net zero goals will not be achieved without giving focus to nature, you will need to ‘walk the talk’ by de-silo-ing climate and nature teams and establish closer working practices. 

Making the case for nature relevant

While for some, nature may feel more tangible and hit closer to home than climate issues, most organizations don’t yet have a common understanding as to what it constitutes. Some might think it’s about protecting bees. For others it’s about making sure rainforests aren’t destroyed. So, it’s important to develop your own in-house definition, to determine what nature means to your business. This will be based on where you have an impact, as well as the ecosystem services you depend on, but also where you think you can have the biggest positive impact and make the biggest difference. 

Yes, there will be some fatigue among some stakeholder groups, tired of conversations about carbon, pollution, Scope 3, greenhouse gases and electricity. So, just as you did with carbon, it’s crucial to answer the ‘what’s in it for me?’ question that will be running through people’s heads. Be ready and able to respond with strong examples to speak not only to hearts and minds but also the commercial brains of your busy colleagues — safeguarding nature means safeguarding the business. 

And remember that teams probably have a lot of the processes and infrastructure already in place to support the nature strategy, so it isn’t always necessary to ‘reinvent the wheel’. Recognition that teams are already partially equipped to operationalize the nature strategy will help empower them, avoiding the ‘top-down’ approach to change which risks creating resistance.  

Whatever you do, don’t underestimate the importance of stakeholder engagement, which is essential for driving sustainability within a business. Having colleagues on board helps to identify priorities, build trust, foster innovation, manage risks and create long-term value. Effective engagement also boosts accountability within different departments so that the responsibility moves outside of the sustainability function and progress is owned by the many, not just the few.