Why nature data is becoming a business necessity

Over the last two centuries, industrialized agriculture normalized exploiting nature in pursuit of productivity and profits. The consequences are now impossible to ignore: deforestation, water and air pollution, excessive pesticide use and emissions are undermining both environmental and human health.

Nature-based and nature positive solutions offer a different path. These approaches aim to address environmental challenges while protecting and restoring ecosystems. In practice, this can include:

• agroforestry, which integrates trees into farmland to moderate climate extremes, improve soil health, and stabilize yields;
• wetland restoration to improve water availability during dry periods; and
• erosion control measures that protect fertile soils and reduce river pollution.

These are just a few examples of nature-based interventions, but, taken together, they can strengthen water security, support more stable agricultural yields, and reduce long-term risks to food production and rural livelihoods.

While Davos may not seem like the most obvious place to advocate for nature-based solutions, businesses and investors are paying closer attention. Climate volatility, tightening regulation and shifting consumer attitudes are turning environmental degradation into a direct threat to business resilience.

Cocoa shocks show nature risk is business risk

The cocoa sector shocks of 2023–2024 made this painfully clear. Declining soil fertility, rising temperatures, increased pest and disease pressure, deforestation and persistent farmer poverty converged into a systemic crisis. Environmental risk became business risk: supply chains stalled, processing plants slowed or shut down, and workers were laid off.

For multinational firms, this was no longer an abstract sustainability issue but a direct hit to operational continuity and short-term profitability.

These shocks did not come as a surprise to researchers. For more than a decade, scientists have warned that cocoa systems in West Africa were structurally vulnerable. They also demonstrated that nature-based solutions – such as agroforestry, soil restoration, and water management – could stabilize yields and reduce climate sensitivity. Yet this evidence was rarely integrated into corporate decision making.

If businesses continue to treat nature-based solutions as optional add-ons rather than core supply-chain investments, similar shocks will repeat – not only in cocoa, but across coffee, palm oil, cotton and other globally traded commodities.

Regulation is closing the gap on greenwashing

New legislation is adding further pressure for companies to change how they operate. To avoid fines, consumer boycotts and missed harvests, businesses must reduce harm to nature – or actively improve environmental conditions in their areas of operation.

At present, much of the environmental, social and governance (ESG) space is dominated by low-quality sustainability reporting. Companies often rely on vague concepts such as “good agricultural practices,” headline-grabbing but shallow metrics (such as donating millions of seedlings without addressing labour, land tenure or survival rates), or low-bar interventions chosen primarily to claim carbon sequestration while ignoring broader environmental impacts.

Upcoming EU policies – including the EU Deforestation-free Regulation, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, and the EU Vision for Agriculture – will increase compliance demands, tighten requirements on land use and reshape supply-chain practices. Others, such as the proposed EU Green Claims Directive, directly target greenwashing by requiring scientific evidence to support sustainability claims.

In short, corporations will need to put their money where their lengthy reports are.

There is enough data for action

Many businesses are now looking to manage these risks proactively, ensuring supply-chain resilience while making sustainability work for them. What they need is reliable data to identify which nature-based solutions actually deliver results and are worth investing in. This is increasingly what brings them to global forums like Davos.

Here is the good news: the data already exists. Robust, decision-ready evidence can not only help avert major challenges but lead to production that is both profitable for businesses, beneficial for farmers, and positive for nature.

That said, nature-based solutions are not silver bullets. They often involve trade-offs as well as synergies. Restoring forest cover, for example, can enhance carbon storage but may lead to reduced water availability if poorly designed. Planting fast-growing species such as eucalyptus may lead to losses of surface and groundwater, and introducing non-native tree species can reduce biodiversity if they are less suitable for nesting and feeding than Indigenous trees.

On the other hand, increasing crop and tree diversity can set off a cascade of positive effects: more diverse habitats support pollinators and natural pest control; reduced synthetic chemical use protects soil life; healthier soils improve nutrient cycling and plant growth; and carbon is stored both above and below ground… the list could go on!

Striking a balance between these trade-offs and synergies requires collaboration across disciplines. Researchers can offer detailed insights into ecological dynamics, while businesses and financial institutions bring experience in investment and implementation. Combining these perspectives makes it easier to design interventions that deliver real impact, substantiate environmental claims, and anticipate long-term risks.

Turning evidence into action

SEI has a long history of working with governments, companies and the finance sector to translate research into practical decision-support tools that guide investments. These collaborations range from supporting safe coal plant closure in Bosnia, to water planning in Morocco, to helping India’s steel industry transition towards greener production.

Our partnership with Clarmondial builds on this experience. Together, we have developed a decision-support tool that helps users assess how potential investments interact with nature. By integrating multiple datasets, the tool provides a 360-degree view of sustainability risks, synergies and trade-offs. It can identify geographic areas and interventions that offer the greatest combined benefits – reducing risk while increasing profitability, improving environmental outcomes and supporting local communities.

Following a successful pilot phase, SEI and Clarmondial see strong potential to further develop and scale the tool, expanding its digital and operational capabilities, incorporating additional datasets and supporting a wider range of agricultural sustainability initiatives and investments.

To thrive in the 21st century green economy, corporations need to recognize that their resources are best spent on interventions that are efficient, evidence-based, compliant with regulation, and beneficial to nature. The science to guide those decisions is already there – it’s time to use it.

This story was originally published in SEI.org on 10 February 2026 and is reproduced here with permission.