New Delhi/Bengaluru: Businesses are affecting nature and biodiversity, so much so that they’re now threatening economies, financial stability and human well-being, according to a report released on February 9 by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), an independent body under the United Nations Environment Programme.However, businesses and governments can take numerous voluntary actions to ensure that their impacts on the environment are minimised, the report noted, listing more than 100 steps that these groups, including civil society, can take to do so.The business and biodiversity reportThe IPBES “Methodological Assessment Report” on the Impact and Dependence of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People – called the Business and Biodiversity Report in short – was launched on Monday in Manchester, United Kingdom, after it was approved by representatives of more than 150 member governments of the IPBES during the 12th session of the IPBES Plenary that was hosted in the city.India too has sent a delegation, comprising government officials and scientists of the Wildlife Institute of India, to attend this conference.The report took over three years to prepare, with 79 experts from 35 countries contributing to the effort. It is the first of its kind, for it compiles the various impacts of business on biodiversity and nature, and suggests steps to prevent this.“This report draws on thousands of sources, bringing together years of research and practice into a single integrated framework that shows both the risks of nature loss to business, and the opportunities for business to help reverse this,” said Matt Jones, one of three co-chairs of the Assessment Report, in a statement. He called it “a pivotal moment” for businesses, financial institutions, governments and civil society, as the report would help “cut through the confusion of countless methods and metrics”, and said that its “clarity and coherence” can help “take meaningful steps towards transformative change”.Also read: Technologies to Capture Carbon, Use or Store it Are Important In India’s Climate Fight – But Require Transparency, Accountability“Businesses and other key actors can either lead the way towards a more sustainable global economy or ultimately risk extinction…both of species in nature, but potentially also their own,” he added.Impacts in trillionsThe report has several important messages.The most important one, perhaps, is that current business-as-usual conditions across the world are speeding biodiversity loss. One way this happens is through the environmental impacts and biodiversity loss enabled by huge subsidies that businesses get for their activities. Per the report, global finance flows which had direct negative impacts on nature amounted to an estimated USD 7.3 trillion in 2023 alone. Of this, private finance accounted for USD 4.9 trillion, and public spending on environmentally harmful subsidies amounted to USD 2.4 trillion.However, the same year saw only USD 220 billion worth of spending for activities contributing to the conservation and restoration of biodiversity. There is clear evidence to show that biodiversity losses caused by economic activity put the future of businesses, the economy and global society at risk, the report noted. Businesses, specifically the way they are operating now, also threaten human health and well-being especially that of indigenous peoples and local communities.“The current external conditions in which businesses operate are not always compatible with achieving a just and sustainable future and perpetuate systemic risks,” it read.This is despite the fact that all businesses depend on nature and biodiversity either directly or indirectly – and biodiversity losses will also threaten businesses themselves.“The loss of biodiversity is among the most serious threats to business,” said economist Stephen Polasky, Co-chair of the Assessment Report. “Yet the twisted reality is that it often seems more profitable to businesses to degrade biodiversity than to protect it. Business as usual may once have seemed profitable in the short term, but impacts across multiple businesses can have cumulative effects, aggregating to global impacts, which can cross ecological tipping points,” he said in a statement.Also read: India-EU Trade is Set to Grow. Its Environmental Costs May Grow Faster“First of all, this report shows that nature is everybody’s business,” said Luthando Dziba, executive secretary of the IPBES, at the virtual launch of the report on Monday. “And that the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of biodiversity is central to business sustainability. Secondly, the report shows that although businesses have contributed to innovation that is driven at the improvement of living standards, the same success has come at a cost for biodiversity.”While the report is targeted at governments and financial institutions that support businesses, it also shows that people have a role to play in this, including individuals, he added.Numerous actions can prevent this lossBusinesses can still be “agents of positive change” and contribute to a just and sustainable future, the report said. Collaboration and both collective as well as individual actions are essential to create this enabling environment. These include taking actions across five components: policy, legal and regulatory frameworks; economic and financial systems; social values, norms and culture; technology and data; and capacity and knowledge.The report provides more than 100 specific examples of such actions that can be taken across these components by businesses, governments, financial actors and civil society.Actions that businesses can take immediately include complying with biodiversity-related policies, laws and regulations; integrating biodiversity-related risks, opportunities, costs and benefits into business decision-making and planning; conducting environmental and social impact assessments and management plans; assess the businesses’ impacts and dependencies on biodiversity, and more.From the IPBES report: Examples of appropriate measurement approach at different levels of decision-making.Actions that governments can take include setting and enforcing policy, legal and regulatory frameworks that incentivise or mandate businesses and financial institutions to promote biodiversity conservation and sustainability; align fiscal policies and financial flows with biodiversity and sustainability goals; promote ethical and sustainable business practices; implement biodiversity monitoring systems; and foster research to address gaps in knowledge, to name a few.The main actions that governments can take revolve around how they can move support that is now harmful to support that is beneficial to the environment, said Ximena Reuda, one of the Co-Chairs of the Assessment Report, at the virtual launch on Monday.“By identifying risks early, we can help prevent escalating costs – higher food prices, rising insurance premiums, and economic instability – affecting families and communities worldwide,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, in a statement. “Time is not on our side, but this Assessment offers a clear pathway on how we can align economic decision-making with environmental reality, delivering lasting benefits for people and for the planet.”India and its “ease of doing business” agendaThe findings of the report come at a time when India is not just carrying on in a business-as-usual model, but undertaking a journey to enable “ease of doing business”. Statements from India’s environment minister, and recent dilutions in environmental legislations are testimony to this.Just last month, the union environment ministry amended the guidelines to establish and operate industries under the Air and Water Acts of 1981 and 1974. Among the many changes that the amendment brings about is ensuring that industries – including highly-polluting ones – will no longer have to renew their permissions under the Acts repeatedly, will now have to wait for only a shorter period to obtain permission under the Acts for both establishment and operation; and the government will enable doing these through a single window system. These moves were aimed chiefly to ensure “ease of doing business”, the ministry had said.Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav has repeated on different occasions that India needs to promote “ease of doing business” – but Yadav has also framed this as a fight to strike a balance between the economy and the environment. Ease of Doing Business cannot come at the cost of environmental safeguards, nor should environmental protection lead to avoidable delays, he said in December, at the Confederation of Real Estate Developer Associations of India (CREDAI) National Conclave 2025.The recent Union budget 2026-27 too focussed on Ease of Doing Business as a “pillar of growth and development”.On February 10, a government press release said that over the last five years, India had improved by 79 ranks in the Ease of Doing Business rankings published by the World Bank Group.However, India’s rankings based on the environment have plummeted.In November last year, India slipped 13 ranks to figure at the 23rd position in the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) released by the environmental think-tank Germanwatch, on the sidelines of UN climate conference COP30 in Belem, Brazil. India went from being a “high” performer to a “medium” one in this year’s CCPI due to its coal dependency, as The Wire reported.The 2024 World Air Quality Report by IQAir, a Swiss air quality technology company, ranked India as the world’s fifth-most polluted country in March 2025, as The Wire also reported.In the Environmental Performance Index of 2024, India ranked fifth from the bottom, out of a list of 180 countries.