By Rachel Martin and Abby Mitchell
The CBO team spent a week at the University of Oxford this June co-hosting the Actionable Science for a Nature Positive Future workshop with the Oxford Martin School and the Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science. Colleagues from Oxford in the UK, University of Jyväskylä in Finland, and University of Melbourne in Australia joined to discuss how academia can make nature-positive science relevant and useful for private sector decision making. Our interdisciplinary group–ecologists, economists, conservation finance experts, social scientists, spatial planners, life cycle assessment researchers, and policy experts–understood the problems of data, risks and benefits, and the role of academia from different angles, bringing insights we can’t see alone.
Much of the current Nature Positive conversation has focused on producing metrics, frameworks, and tools, but we turned our discussion to a broader question: Using the scientific evidence we already have, how do we push decision-making toward meaningful action?
Using Thomas White's 2024 paper "The “nature-positive” journey for business: A conceptual research agenda" as a benchmark, we discussed how much progress has already been made, especially around measuring outcomes, assessment efforts, and disclosure advancements. But, there’s more to be done in translating this into decisions that governments, businesses, and communities can confidently act on within their specific contexts, whether that is risk analyses, financial decisions, or procurement changes.
Beyond the academic and research goals of the workshop, collaboration is an output in its own right. Some of the most valuable discussions over the two-day workshop were about building relationships, networks, and knowledge-sharing across our groups. Each institution has a unique specialty: from innovation and decision science at ASU, to deep corporate engagement and methodological advancements at JYU, ecological and policy powerhouses at Melbourne, and reconceptualizing the role of the private sector in achieving nature-positive outcomes at Oxford’s Nature Positive Hub.
Together we can fail faster and learn quicker, enabling Nature Positive transformation across business, academia and society.
