#30 - The emerging trends to watch: NbS, RegAg, AI, reporting regulations

Joshua Berger

CEO at BioInt | Transforming biodiversity impact & dependency measurement | Driving pragmatic & science-based actions for nature | The Biodiversity Footprint Intelligence Company | Views are my own

Published Mar 11, 2025

This thirtieth issue of The Nature Intelligence Newsletter explores the future of biodiversity innovation, mostly from an investor angle. It covers:

"The Future of Biodiversity Investing & Innovation", a multi stakeholder report by Brainforest packed with insights on future trends
A focus on trends related to physical risks, MRV and biodiversity credits
What to really expect from AI for business & biodiversity in 2025

This issue heavily draws from the work put together by Camille Accolas and Ben O'Sullivan at Brainforest, thanks to them!

The biodiversity topics you should not miss in the short and medium term

Brainforest gathered market analyses and thoughts from 13 experts & investors on biodiversity innovation & investments and summarized it all in a short document.

My favourite insights:

"Fragmentation in Monitoring Reporting and Verification (MRV) technologies makes it difficult to scale. Startups are offering niche solutions rather than integrated platforms." Xavier Lorphelin, Serena

Most startups are indeed offering only one technology: eDNA, bio-acoustics, etc. and there is only a handful of one-stop-shop platforms, usually with significant limitations.

"Localized complexity limits scalability. Unlike software-based climate tech, biodiversity and water tech must adapt to specific ecosystems." Xavier Lorphelin, Serena

Biodiversity can be measured in standardised ways with common categories of indicators such as ecosystem condition. But the specific metrics and protocols involved usually need to be adapted to local contexts, hampering scalability.

"New regulations like the EUDR and CSRD are pushing for detailed traceability from farm to final product, requiring companies to collect data that was previously not necessary. With similar regulations being considered in the UK and US, supply chain transparency is becoming a global requirement" Salla Mankinen, Orijin

Some points came repeatedly in the report but are partly misleading in my opinion:

The first is summarized by Camilla Rizzi from Plug and Play:

"One of the biggest challenges for biodiversity-focused startups is monetizing nature-based solutions. While these solutions deliver environmental and social benefits, many struggle to translate these into financial returns, limiting their appeal to investors."

While I do not disagree that nature-based solutions (NbS) struggle to generate financial returns, I feel like presenting that as a "monetizing nature" issue is wrong-headed.

I seriously doubt that startups themselves will find innovative business models to miraculously create financial returns from ecosystems (I have been involved in innovative financing mechanisms for biodiversity for more than 10 years and unfortunately have not yet witnessed miracles). That may even be dangerous as that would mean squeezing ecosystems to align their cycles with financial 5 year (or less) cycles.

The truth is without regulatory changes - creating biodiversity market instruments, banning some activities or production processes, setting low impact thresholds, etc. -, the financial returns from restoring nature will remain low.

The second is identified as a barrier:

Lack of harmonized metrics

While this is partly true, harmonization is happening, driven among others by the Nature Positive Initiative (see my recent post about their universal 9 indicators) and the elements of biodiversity to measure are broadly agreed upon: ecosystem condition and species extinction risk.

Deep dives

In two posts, I detailed my views on what are actually false opportunities, and on where I think attention should actually be focused.

Physical risks, MRV and biodiversity credits

AI

AI is another topic that kept cropping up in the analyses of Brainforest's experts, but here again, I believe close attentions need to be paid to what exactly is being discussed as AI is particularly ripe for false good ideas.

Tips: subtitles are available on smartphone (due to a limitation of LinkedIn, they are not displayed on the video when displayed on computers; I'll do better for next video!).

To go further: previous issue of the Nature Intelligence Newsletter entirely dedicated to AI & biodiversity.

Disclaimer: all views are mine and do not represent any institution or initiative's.

Access previous issues of the Nature Intelligence Newsletter:

Case studies and examples

#01 - Impacts on ecosystem integrity of a listed equity index assessed for the first time - STOXX600

#08 - Getting inspired: 3 front-runners who assessed their biodiversity impacts at the corporate level

#09 - Ecosystem condition: direct measurement and assessment of regulatory offsets

Ecosystem condition definition and metrics

#02 - All you ever wanted to know about the MSA

#03 - Ecosystem condition: the indicator to watch for corporate biodiversity performance

Biodiversity measurement tools

#04 – Differences between the corporate biodiversity metrics