The stakeholder every business depends on, and no board ever hears from
Nature on Board is our sister initiative in partnership with the Earth Law Center. It starts from the observation that the natural systems that invest in every business, water, soil, climate stability and pollination, absorb the cost of its decisions but are never repaid, and never get a say. Nature on Board enables boards to learn how to govern for, as and with nature for long-term value creation, risk mitigation and resilience.
Biological intelligence
Govern for, as and with nature
Nature has been investing in us for 3.8 billion years without ever drawing a dividend. Every business runs on that investment, yet in most boardrooms nature is a risk to disclose rather than a partner to govern with. The boards that will define the next era are not the ones with the cleanest disclosures. They are the ones treating nature as intelligence to deploy, architecture to design with, and a counterparty to contract with.
1
Govern for nature
A Nature Proxy is a named person in the room, briefed to hold the interests of the ecosystems the business runs on. The role sounds odd for about ten minutes. Then someone asks what the aquifer looks like in 2050, nobody in the room can answer, and the conversation changes shape.
Appoint a proxy briefed to hold the interests of the ecosystems the business relies on
Ask the fifty-year question while it is still cheap to answer
Visit Nature on Board
2
Govern as nature
At the Qatar National Dialogue on Climate Change, and again at the Dubai Future Forum, we sat directors down and gave them the seats of mangroves, migratory birds and coral reefs. Senior executives arguing on behalf of a reef sounds like a workshop game. What happened instead was that people began defending positions the agenda had no column for, and the decisions came out different.
Step into the perspective of mangroves, migratory birds and coral reefs
Run as interspecies board simulations at the Qatar National Dialogue on Climate Change and the Dubai Future Forum
Visit Nature on Board
3
Govern with nature
The frameworks, briefings and resources a director needs to weigh climate and nature in the ordinary run of decisions, rather than once a year in the annual report. Most of the cost of getting this wrong lands somewhere off the balance sheet: on a water table, a fishery, a coastline. Governing with nature means putting a number on that before someone else does it for you.
Treat climate and nature as the operating condition, not the disclosure column
Put a price on risk a river, a reef or a water table would otherwise absorb unpaid
Visit Nature on Board
Put the third intelligence in the room
Human intelligence, artificial intelligence, biological intelligence. Nature on Board holds the third one: frameworks, briefings and simulations for boards willing to find out what changes when the living world is represented at the table.