Webinar recap: How businesses can build a credible biodiversity investment strategy

Earthly brought together Lorienne Whittle, Rewilding Landscapes Manager at

Nattergal

; Siobhan Stewart, Head of Delivery at

Natcap

; and Sharan Ghai, Research Lead at Earthly, to explore how corporates can move from recognising nature as a risk to acting on it with evidence.

In February 2026, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) released an

assessment

endorsed by more than 150 governments, confirming that

nature loss is now a systemic risk to economies, supply chains and financial stability

. As a result, businesses are facing growing expectations to understand, manage and report their nature-related risks and dependencies.

Yet, many businesses are still unprepared. Fewer than 35% of companies filing first-wave Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) reports in 2025 had adequate systems for measuring biodiversity impacts, creating audit risk heading into 2026.

To help businesses navigate these challenges, Earthly recently brought together experts from Nattergal and Natcap Research for a webinar on how businesses can use voluntary biodiversity credits to act on nature-related risk. The webinar looked at how businesses can build a credible business case for investing in nature, where biodiversity credits fit alongside frameworks like TNFD and SBTN, and what to look for when evaluating high-integrity nature projects.

Throughout the discussion, the panel made one point clear: investing in nature is no longer just about reputation or corporate responsibility. It's becoming a business-critical issue that affects risk, resilience and long-term value.

Biodiversity loss has become a board-level

business risk

, especially for companies with complex supply chains or growing regulatory obligations. Increasingly, disclosure frameworks expect businesses not only to recognise these risks, but also to measure, report and manage them.

That shift changes what a credible nature strategy looks like. Businesses need to understand their nature-related risks, identify where action will have the greatest impact, and back any biodiversity credit purchase with a project assessment that can withstand scrutiny. Frameworks like TNFD and SBTN provide the structure to do that.

Projects like Boothby Wildland give businesses an opportunity to act on that strategy today. They fund measurable ecosystem restoration while helping organisations build the evidence base they need to support future disclosures and sustainability claims.

A high-quality carbon credit must represent real, additional and measurable climate benefits against a credible baseline. It should also be independently verified and designed to deliver long-term, permanent impact.

Industry guidance on evaluating

Verified Carbon Standard (VCS)

projects shows that weaknesses in verification and evidence are often early warning signs of poor project quality. In other words, a project's credibility depends not only on the outcomes it reports, but also on the strength of the evidence supporting those claims.

Sharan Ghai, Earthly's Research Lead, puts it plainly when it comes to how Keystone 3.0 assesses this:

In practice, this means a young project like Boothby can score well precisely because its baseline is rigorous and its monitoring plan is credible. It also means corporates buying credits can look past a project's age and check instead whether the evidence on offer actually matches the claim being made.

The panel set out a clear sequence for corporates approaching nature investment:

Identify key impacts and dependencies across your operations and supply chains. Even a rough internal assessment is better than waiting for a perfect one - most businesses already have more relevant data sitting in existing sustainability or procurement reporting than they realise.

Ground your nature investment in evidence and a clear outcome - risk mitigation, compliance, or positive impact. A business case that's tied to a specific driver (a regulatory deadline, a customer requirement, a board target) moves faster internally than one framed as a general sustainability commitment.

Procurement, finance, site managers, and operations all need to be involved. Nature investment decisions often stall because the right people weren't brought in early enough to shape it.

Tools like the WWF Biodiversity Risk Filter and ENCORE can help map dependencies before committing to a sustainability budget. They are a credible, no-cost way to get a first read on where your exposure is highest.

A recurring theme across the audience questions was where TNFD and SBTN each fit. Neither needs to be chosen over the other, since they sit at different points in the same process.

Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD)

is a framework that helps businesses identify, assess, manage and disclose nature-related risks, dependencies, impacts and opportunities. On the other hand,

Science Based Targets Network (SBTN)

is a framework that helps businesses set science-based targets to reduce their impacts on nature and contribute to protecting and restoring ecosystems.

TNFD identifies risks and dependencies through its LEAP approach: Locate, Evaluate, Assess, Prepare. It helps a company work out where in its operations and supply chain it depends on or affects nature, and where those dependencies sit geographically. 

SBTN takes those findings and translates them into targets and action plans, including land targets such as no conversion of natural ecosystems, land footprint reduction, and landscape engagement.

Biodiversity credits can support either stage, whether a company is still mapping risk exposure through TNFD or has moved on to setting SBTN targets. This same logic extends to supply chain resilience:

The

habitat mosaic creation project in Boothby Wildland, Lincolnshire, England

is a 617-hectare former arable farm, owned by nature-restoration company Nattergal. Nattergal takes a natural process-led approach: kick-starting habitat creation in a project's early years, then letting natural processes, including grazing by large herbivores and beaver-led wetland engineering, take over.

Biodiversity at the site has more than doubled since its 2023 baseline. Wetland habitat has expanded from a handful of ponds to over 30. Beavers are also being reintroduced, and other species including little egrets, green sandpipers, teal, grey partridge and hen harriers have returned to the site.

Keystone 3.0

assesses nature-based projects across three pillars, carbon, biodiversity and people, giving each equal weight. Every indicator carries two scores: a maturity score for how well the project meets the criterion, and a confidence score for how strong the evidence behind it is. The two combine into a 0 to 10 result, and a project needs an overall score of 5.5 or higher to meet Earthly's minimum standard.

Boothby scored 8.2 overall, with strong marks across all three pillars: Carbon 8.3, Biodiversity 8.1, and People 8.0. 

Its people pillar score came out higher than any biodiversity credit project Earthly had previously assessed, driven by an independent stakeholder analysis that identified more than 60 organisations, including local residents, conservation groups, academics and government agencies. It was also supported by a best-practice engagement report commissioned from the Countryside and Community Research Institute at the University of Gloucestershire and the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery at Oxford University.

Some of the evidence behind that score, include:

Boothby is still at the beginning of its 30-year restoration journey. Unlike mature reserves, buyers coming in now get to witness the transformation in real time rather than reading about outcomes after the fact, giving them a live view of how habitat recovery actually progresses.

Over the next 30 years, Boothby's habitats will be managed through natural grazing by large herbivores, yet to be reintroduced, which will scallop scrub edges and create a mosaic of microhabitats. The project is expected to increase invertebrate abundance, enhance bat diversity, and support the recovery of grassland and woodland birds.

Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG)

is a mandatory planning requirement in England that requires most new developments to leave biodiversity in a measurably better state than before. Developers achieve this by creating or enhancing habitats either on-site or elsewhere, with biodiversity gains measured using the statutory biodiversity metric.

Voluntary Biodiversity Credits (VBCs)

are purchased by businesses that choose to invest in nature restoration beyond regulatory requirements. Rather than offsetting the impacts of a specific development, they fund measurable improvements in biodiversity and support wider ecosystem recovery through independently assessed conservation and restoration projects.

Earthly's voluntary biodiversity credits at Boothby are fractionalised Biodiversity Net Gain units, built on the same DEFRA metric used in the statutory BNG market.

To prevent double counting, units are reserved on an internal

inventory platform

, and once sold, the equivalent statutory units are removed from the National Register.

If you're developing a nature strategy, evaluating biodiversity credits to derisk your investment, or looking to understand the role high-integrity projects play in that process, here's where to start:

Are biodiversity credits a replacement for Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG)?

No, Biodiversity Net Gain is a regulatory requirement for most developments in England, while biodiversity credits are voluntary investments. Businesses use biodiversity credits to support nature restoration beyond compliance and contribute to broader biodiversity goals.

How can businesses identify high-integrity biodiversity projects?

Look for projects with clear baselines, measurable outcomes, independent verification and transparent reporting. Project assessments should also consider biodiversity, carbon, community impact, governance and the strength of the evidence supporting project claims.

Earthly's

Keystone

framework provides one example of an independent assessment, scoring projects against more than 160 indicators across carbon, biodiversity and people to give businesses greater confidence in their investment decisions.

Can businesses invest in biodiversity credits outside their own supply chain?

Yes, while many organisations prioritise projects linked to their operations or supply chains, businesses can also support high-integrity restoration projects in other locations to contribute to global biodiversity recovery and demonstrate environmental leadership.

Do biodiversity credits support sustainability reporting?

Yes, biodiversity credits complement reporting frameworks such as TNFD and SBTN, but they are not a substitute for assessing, managing and disclosing nature-related risks and impacts.

Is there a single standard for measuring a unit of biodiversity?

Not yet, but multiple models are in active use, including the DEFRA metric, Pivotal Earth's basket of metrics, The Landbanking Group's Ecosystem Integrity Index, and Verra's emerging Nature Framework. 

Keystone 3.0 provides a consistent integrity layer across projects regardless of which underlying metric they use, giving buyers a common basis for comparison.