You might have missed it over the noise of the budget, but last week the latest UN Biodiversity Conference, COP16, wrapped up in Colombia. The conference highlighted the rising pressure faced by both government and retailers to understand, address and reverse our impact on nature and biodiversity.
COP16 was intended to build on landmark agreements around nature and biodiversity established at the previous COP in 2022. However, in the lead-up to this year’s conference it was clear the UK had failed to make progress – and in several cases was moving backwards – towards the goal of halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030.
Retailers know better than anyone why progress is needed on climate and nature: joint action towards net zero and nature-positive operations is fundamental to securing the future resilience of our supply chains. We are already seeing the impact of deforestation, extreme weather, soil degradation and over-fishing on sourcing policies, product availability and prices.
Customers might not always be explicit in their choices, but they expect retailers to be responsible businesses in reducing their impact on the environment.
A ‘nature positive’ government
Our new government have signalled a renewed interest in intervening where necessary to deliver the UK’s nature ambition. Environment secretary Steve Reed has already stated his intention to “make this the most nature-positive government this nation has ever had”, beginning with a review of the UK’s Environmental Improvement Plan.
A good start would be to resolve the position on deforestation, legislate the ban on peat sales and provide clarity on sustainability reporting requirements, all issues held over from the last government.
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For retailers, nature must be a key focus for commercial, reputational and compliance reasons. Many food retailers have already started to incorporate nature into business strategies, but for the majority just beginning on their journey with nature, the initial steps are to start by using reporting and disclosure frameworks, such as the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, to understand nature-related risks and impacts in their supply chains.
They can then set clear and measurable nature-related targets under the Science Based Targets Network, to begin to address risks and impacts in their supply chains and to support their suppliers in implementing nature-positive changes into their operations.
Plan for Nature
We are supporting retailers to take action on nature and biodiversity. This month, we launched our Plan for Nature: a programme of events aimed at helping retailers understand the importance of their nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities, identify their avenues and barriers to nature-positive action, and how to integrate nature into existing work on decarbonisation.
Industry collaboration with government will also be critical in accelerating nature policy, and the BRC is uniquely positioned to engage the industry’s voice in conversations with government, to begin to enable solutions that will catalyse the sustainability of the industry’s supply chains.
COP16 may have ended, but the industry conversation on nature is far from over. Nature is at the heart of retail resilience and growth, and the time for action is now.
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