The Business Case for Nature
We need to fundamentally re-think the way we view the juxtaposition of business and nature.
Ever since the industrial revolution sent us scurrying into factories and later, offices, the chasm between business and the natural world outside has been growing ever wider.
Today’s modern workplaces and practices are seismically disconnected from the natural world, more than 250 years since we stopped labouring in-tune with nature and shifted to an urban, industrialised society.
Research evidences this, proving a large proportion of offices are airless and bland, with little daylight. A study of 7,600 workers in 16 countries found that 58% had no live plants in their office and 47% reported having no natural light.
It’s incredible that something as simple as a plant in the office has been proven to increase happiness and productivity, but surely the impact of adding even the tiniest bit of nature to the workplace shows we need to think bigger than that. We need to fundamentally re-think the way we view the juxtaposition of business and nature.
It’s time to change the model – not just for the benefit of the natural world, which is clearly suffering from our over-consumption of natural resources, but also for the wellbeing of our workforce, customers and societies in which we commercially operate. We need to reconnect how we work and live with nature at every level: we need to create nature-positive businesses.
It’s long been assumed that there is no business case for re-aligning business with the natural world. It sounds naively idyllic to talk about industry and nature in the same breath, yet more and more emerging research shows there is a bottom-line benefit, as well as a societal one.
A more productive and engaged workforce, with lower cortisol levels and blood pressure but an increased cognitive function, benefits everyone. But it also helps individuals develop certain key qualities within themselves.
Personal qualities like connection, creativity, adaptability and resilience should be encouraged to come to the fore – all of which are supported through interaction with the natural world. When we look at the increasing rate of mental health episodes, for example, it is alarmingly evident that the complexity of the world we find ourselves in now means we need to find new ways of working and being.
Whether that’s re-designing offices around natural light and fresh air; allowing for more remote working; creating inviting green or wild spaces for employees to take breaks or hold outdoor meetings, or simply just changing the company culture to normalise nature as being part of the working day. We all benefit from re-connecting with nature and it’s essential that we have more companies who champion this.
Any small action a business can take to encourage closer natural connection for its staff is a bonus, yet we need to go further than this to truly revolutionise the relationship between industry and the natural world. We should be thinking about new styles of leadership, which not only work to stop the destruction of the natural world, but actively work to bring their company closer to it. We need new mindsets, new forms of organisation and new styles of leadership that prioritise the innate human need for nature.
The present model of capitalism exists at the expense of the wider world and we’ve ignored our instinctive affinity with other living systems for too long - and at our own expense. Businesses are more like eco-systems than most of us acknowledge, and as such we need managers and leaders to step up and take responsibility for the eco-system that they commercially operate within.
We have to develop and teach systemic awareness of how each commercial enterprise interacts with the natural world around it, finding new ways to achieve balance. Business does not have to be a destructive force within nature – and neither does it have to be separate.
Poet John Donne made us all aware that “no (hu)man is an island”, but when it comes to our place in the world we live and our impact on the environment, and its impact on us, the same concept applies to our companies, too. Without seriously considering the natural world around us, we risk killing the very thing that sustains us on both a personal and an economic level.
Businesses don’t operate in isolation. They rely on nature for resources: from food, minerals and materials; for ecosystem services like pollination of crops, water filtration, waste decomposition, and climate regulation; and also for healthy and prosperous (and let’s not forget beautiful) societies to provide customers and employees.
Prioritising nature has to be incorporated into our commercial strategies if we want to enjoy long-term viability of our business models, predictable and stable supply chains, improved human relationships and access to new markets, products and services.
Doing what we can to bring nature into our business strategy isn’t a sweet Enid Blyton-style daydream; it’s a fundamental necessity for commercial survival long-term. And those changes will only realise when we embrace a new style of nature-positive leadership and commercial culture.
As Andres Roberts explains as part of his bio-leadership theory: “We need to redesign human structures, not by following the rules of linear growth, extraction and control, but using the principles of life; cycles, optimisation and regeneration.”
Every leader must now take responsibility to reduce their company’s negative impact on nature; innovate and scale up products and technologies with a lower impact, and channel investment into protecting and restoring nature around them, and where they themselves have an impact or need for its mutual giving.
It is time to re-consider the juxtaposition of business and the natural world. They can no longer be viewed as opposing forces. If we want to ensure our own commercial – and personal – survival, nature and industry MUST come together.
