We truly believe that businesses want to take action on nature and are building a full suite of biodiversity protection projects that match every need.
Over the past three years we’ve (Wilderlands) become a global leader in the biodiversity credit market with over 250,000 credits sold preserving precious habitat across four projects in Australia.
We’re now seeing the need to scale our solutions to match the emerging needs of enterprise partners, providing sophisticated solutions that truly meet the demands of these complex companies.
Wilderlands has teamed up with Guy Williams to launch a new division dedicated to developing high quality, bespoke projects that provide opportunities for both co-investment amongst a coalition of partners as well as offer unique access to leading conservation partners performing the work on the ground.
This solution will address the consistent themes we’ve seen emerge through extensive consultation with companies, nationally and internationally, and offer a solution that enables businesses to act as part of a coalition, reducing the risks of investing alone.
What is the Nature Action Coalition
The Nature Action Coalition is providing the opportunity for between 5-10 companies to come together as the first cohort, alongside others ready to take action.
Guy Williams shares details of the vision below.
The Nature Action Coalition will help companies build internal capabilities in partnership with biodiversity experts, participate in a “sandpit” environment to experiment, learn, and develop strategies without immediate public scrutiny, and join a coalition of peers committed to scaling nature action effectively.
The NAC offers a collaborative platform where organizations can invest alongside their peers in reputable, transparent conservation projects.
By fostering group participation, NAC aims to reduce individual greenwashing risks while scaling biodiversity impact across a diversified project portfolio. The initiative also provides an opportunity to implement TNFD (Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures) early action and explore the Nature Repair Market framework.
How will the Nature Action Collection address the barriers preventing businesses from taking action?
Through consultation with a large range of companies we’ve heard consistent concerns across three themes: complexity, bandwidth, fear of greenwashing and and any activity that poses reputational risk, as well as challenging building the business case (and access) to investible nature solutions
Complexity
Many businesses believe they’re still not ready to act as they continue to understand and assess their impact on nature, leveraging frameworks like the TNFD to guide their process.
These companies are often viewing these process as as a linear path waiting until each step is completed to proceed, however this is not how these frameworks were intended to be adopted.
These companies already know at least 70% of their dependencies on nature which is more than enough to action – and we’re beginning to work with a range of businesses who are having this realisation.
We believe as more companies come to acknowledge that this is the reality it will provide a vastly different pool of businesses looking to take action and the perfect chance to take this next step alongside other partners and peers to support a portfolio of projects.
Bandwidth
For many companies, nature is a new challenge and being juggled against many competing priorities.
The Nature Action Coalition provides access to leading experts to help navigate what nature positive means as well as providing access to projects and partners to see best practice in action.
Reputational Risks
Companies fear public scrutiny and accusations of greenwashing.
The projects supported through the Nature Action Coalition offer a safe sandbox for testing and learning alongside peers, to develop capability whilst delivering important nature protection work.
Access to projects
We’re also hearing that companies don’t feel the current projects available are at the maturity and scale to meet their requirements.
Finally, we’ve built a breadth of partnerships with landholders across the country looking to find a way to make protecting the planet a viable path for property owners and have access to a unique range of habitats to match the needs of any partner.
How will Wilderlands match supply and market requirements?
Wilderlands have developed a proprietary tool that helps both assess the conservation value of projects as well as understand the requirements of a business across 9 key areas.
The BIOTA can also be utilised the assess the requirements of a business and match to appropriate projects.
The below provides a summary as well as an example of the report produced for an existing Wilderlands project.
We work with each partner to assess their needs and then present a number of possible projects which they may wish to support.
What’s an example of the type of project that the Nature Action Coalition might support?
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Who is Guy Williams?
With over 20 years working at the forefront of biodiversity and natural capital innovation, there are few people on the planet as qualified to develop this new solution as Guy.
In recent years, he’s helped develop nature-related frameworks like the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) and Science Based Targets Network (SBTN) as well as advising businesses on nature strategy and developing leading reports on biodiversity markets and forecasts in his roles with Deloitte and most recently as Executive Director at Pollination.
Why Wilderlands?
Wilderlands have developed one of the world’s first voluntary biodiversity units and created a platform to make it simple for individuals and organisations to start protecting nature today.
The Biological Diversity Unit © is a one square metre unit that promises permanent protection and 20 years of active management of high-conservation value projects across Australia.
Since launching in early August 2022, Wilderlands have protected over 230,000 square metres of vulnerable ecosystems across four projects spread across three states.
The Nature Action Coalition will unlock all of Wilderlands capabilities outlined in the document below.
Why now?
By 2030, major corporations across the globe will be required to disclose their impacts and dependencies on nature and have publicly available strategies detailing their committed actions to address their footprint, similar to how they have been reporting on climate for years.
Nature strategies will likely include actions such as direct conservation investments, participation in biodiversity credit markets, and strategic partnerships with conservation experts. These capabilities, however, cannot be developed overnight.
What seems like a clear pathway forward is, in reality, a complex challenge requiring simultaneous capability development—skills and expertise that most companies lack and cannot build overnight. Companies must act now to develop the necessary capabilities, build internal expertise, and forge strategic partnerships before regulatory pressure and market demand make it imperative.
