Biodiversity Gets Its ISO Moment: Nature Accounting Arrives

Moss on Holm Oak Branch in Sierra Morena, Andalucía, Spain

When the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) unveiled ISO 17298 in Kigali, there were no sweeping headlines or prime-time pledges, yet this quiet milestone could change how companies value nature, as well as how investors price risk. By formalizing the emerging field of nature accounting, it could prove almost as consequential for corporate sustainability as the Paris Agreement was for climate, especially if it triggers the same kind of data-driven accountability shift.

This time, the subject isn’t carbon but the ecosystems that quietly underpin the global economy. Over the past half-century, biodiversity has fallen by roughly two to six percent per decade, according to the UN-backed IPBES. Its latest report warns that the destruction of ecosystems is triggering a chain of interconnected crises that threaten food security, economic stability, and social resilience.

More than half of global GDP—about $58 trillion—has been determined to be moderately or highly dependent on nature’s services, from water and pollination to soil fertility and raw materials. Against that backdrop, ISO 17298 arrives as a long-missing rulebook for turning biodiversity concern into measurable corporate action. that backdrop, ISO 17298 arrives as a long-missing rulebook for turning biodiversity concern into measurable corporate action.

For the first time, companies, investors, and public institutions have a globally agreed rulebook for how to measure, manage, and report their relationship with nature. The world’s first international biodiversity standard ISO 17298: Biodiversity for Organizations – Guidelines and Requirements signals that nature has moved from the margins of corporate sustainability reports to the center of strategy and fiduciary duty. For CFOs and boards, ISO 17298 isn’t another box-tick. It defines how biodiversity risk enters credit ratings, audit trails, and shareholder expectations.

“Many organizations see the urgency of biodiversity action, but navigating the path can be complex,” said Noelia Garcia Nebra, head of sustainability and partnerships at ISO in an interview. “Until now, there has been no globally agreed standard for integrating biodiversity into strategies and operations. That lack of a common framework has led to fragmented approaches and growing confusion as nature-related risks and expectations increase.”

From Disclosure To Demonstration

Developed by experts from more than 60 countries, it turns broad biodiversity goals into an operational checklist of how to measure, govern, and act, offering a clear process companies can follow, whether they manage farms, factories, or finance portfolios. Garcia Nebra describes it as a decisive shift from disclosure to demonstration.

“ISO 17298 embeds biodiversity into core decision-making and risk management, not just sustainability reporting,” she said in an interview. “It gives organizations a structured way to assess impacts, dependencies, risks, and opportunities, and to develop biodiversity action plans adapted to local realities and global expectations.”

The standard borrows lessons from the carbon era. Where ISO 14001 and the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) built the infrastructure for carbon accountability, ISO 17298 and its close cousin, the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), now define the emerging architecture for nature accounting.

TNFD’s LEAP framework – Locate, Evaluate, Assess, Prepare – provides the analytical logic; ISO 17298 supplies the operational mechanics. TNFD’s technical director Emily McKenzie said the standard “will help harmonize concepts, definitions, and approaches, and support organizations in considering nature-related issues in their strategy and operations.”

The standard treats biodiversity as a system of interlocking indicators. It guides organizations to select science-based metrics that capture their relationship with nature,from pressures such as land-use change or water consumption, to ecosystem states like habitat quality or species trends. It also covers dependencies such as pollination or water flow, and responses like restoration or net biodiversity gain. The goal: credible, comparable, and context-specific data that can withstand investor and regulatory scrutiny.

“The real test will be interoperability,” noted Dr Harald Heubaum, chair of the Centre for Energy and Climate Policy at SOAS, University of London. “Whether ISO 17298 and TNFD create a common language for business and regulators, not just another layer of reporting.”

Lessons From France’s Early Pilot

The new ISO 17298 standard builds on France’s 2021 NF X32-001 framework, which gave early adopters a step-by-step way to turn biodiversity goals into action plans. That pilot proved companies could operationalize nature management as rigorously as safety or quality systems, laying the groundwork for today’s global rollout.

“Some organizations used it to strengthen biodiversity action plans that were scattered or symbolic; others used it to start from scratch with a clear sequence of ‘I have to do this, I should do that, I can do this,’” said Fanny Bancourt, biodiversity consultant at BL évolution, who worked on the ISO 17298 project.

Although the French standard lacked international visibility, Bancourt said it lent early adopters credibility. “It wasn’t yet a requirement from investors or regulators,” she said, “but citing a national standard showed that biodiversity management was being treated with the same seriousness as quality or safety.”

Nature Accounting Meets Finance

Biodiversity is increasingly a material financial risk, from supply-chain disruption to resource scarcity. Garcia Nebra said ISO 17298 enables comparable, credible data that “strengthens ESG credibility, informs investment decisions, and facilitates access to nature-positive finance, blended finance, and green bonds.”

By giving investors a consistent way to evaluate biodiversity performance, the standard could catalyze new markets, from biodiversity-linked loans and insurance products, to due-diligence tools, just as standardized carbon accounting enabled transition finance a decade ago.

A food company, for instance, could map how land-use change in its supply chain affects crop yields and supplier risk, while a bank could assess the nature footprint of its lending portfolio. In both cases, biodiversity becomes an input to capital allocation, not an afterthought in CSR reports.

Crucially, ISO 17298 also sets a baseline for integrating biodiversity safeguards alongside carbon metrics, reducing the risk of greenwashing in nature-based solutions. “Credible biodiversity safeguards are essential for the integrity of carbon and nature-based solutions,” Garcia Nebra said. “ISO 17298 provides that baseline.”

Global Uptake And Next Steps

ISO anticipates early adoption in Europe, especially in France, Germany, and the U.K., and there is growing engagement from Canada, Japan, Brazil, and Rwanda. “Biodiversity considerations are particularly relevant for sectors such as agriculture, mining, construction, energy, chemicals, and textiles,” Garcia Nebra said. “These industries are expected to be among the first to implement the standard.”

The framework is deliberately scalable so smaller enterprises and public institutions can use it to align with national biodiversity goals, demonstrate compliance, and tap emerging green-finance pools.

For newcomers, Bancourt advises starting simple. “ISO 17298 is designed for every kind of organization,” she said. “Just follow the requirements one by one, and you’ll quickly have a robust action plan. Companies already aligning with TNFD are largely in sync with the standard’s expectations and for those planning to align later, ISO 17298 is the best starting point.”

Garcia Nebra adds that the standard can strengthen resilience, particularly in regions that are both biodiversity-rich and climate-vulnerable, by translating dependencies such as water, soil fertility, and pollination into measurable business risks. In parallel, ISO TC 331 is developing complementary standards on biodiversity net gain, ecosystem services, and measurement approaches, forming what Rossi calls “the technical backbone for scaling nature-positive action globally.”

A New Era Of Accountability

Taken together, ISO 17298 and TNFD mark an evolution in how markets and institutions account for nature. “ISO 17298 represents an important step forward in helping organizations understand and account for their biodiversity-related impacts and dependencies,” Garcia Nebra said. “Members of ISO/TC 331 see this milestone as part of a broader ambition: to embed biodiversity considerations across all relevant standards.”

If carbon accounting defined the last decade of corporate transformation, biodiversity accounting may define the next, but the difference now is speed. What took two decades for carbon, from voluntary disclosure to investor-grade accountability, is unfolding in half the time for nature. Investors are beginning to treat that loss as both a planetary and a portfolio risk.

With ISO 17298, biodiversity has entered the realm of fiduciary duty. Companies now have both the blueprint and the expectation to prove it. If adoption moves as quickly as carbon accounting did, biodiversity metrics could appear within two or three years, in board audits, loan covenants, and supply-chain contracts alike.

And as markets move from aspiration to implementation, the question will be which companies will lead in nature accounting, treating nature as capital and not a CSR gesture: and how quickly will investors price it in?

Forbes