According to the World Economic
Forum, over half of
the world’s GDP is moderately or highly dependent on nature — highlighting the
crucial link between a healthy environment and economic prosperity. So, isn’t it
time the people sitting on company Boards got interested in valuing nature — and
saw it is a business opportunity rather than simply a risk?
Sustainable Brands® caught up with Ephi Banaynal dela
Cruz, co-founder and CEO of Context
Nature, to find out how they are supporting
companies to integrate nature into business and investment decision-making to
build a nature-positive future.
Where did your interest in finding nature solutions and building regenerative businesses start?
Ephi Banaynal dela Cruz: Well, during my career, I’ve had the opportunity to
co-create a lot of the environmental standards that we see today — everything
from sustainable packaging to scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions — so, I’ve always
been an environmental steward. I was Palm Inc’s very first environmental steward
— taking care of the people, the facilities and the product division; where we
looked at product design and designing for the environment.
But because I also had a background in engineering, I ran the compliance team —
which kind of brought me to this point: I wanted to design software that would
enable practitioners like myself.
And that leads us on to Context Nature. Can you explain the purpose of what you are now doing?
EBDC: Along with my co-founder, Sylvia
Vaquer, we’re looking to make sure that
people who don’t have a voice — like nature, like Indigenous communities — have
a way to engage in not just letting people know what they need to hear; but more
importantly, in how to participate in more of a capitalistic structure. So,
we’re looking at equitable models to compensate when value is provided — whether
that’s nature-based services or citizen knowledge or Indigenous community
knowledge.
Economic decision-makers — such as investors, governments and businesses — don’t
have the tools and knowledge to make decisions that regenerate nature. So, we’re
building the capacity to enable nature-positive actions at
scale.
Our generative AI assistant augments people working at the intersection of
finance and nature, and answers their questions 24/7. We can help decision
makers think most effectively about how to become nature-positive by using
authoritative research, and streamline data gathering and analysis, giving
visibility to nature risks and opportunities, and helping to build plans based
on ecologically sound frameworks and methodologies.
Yes, we are an AI SaaS company; but we’re trying to do more than that by
shifting the way we build economic structures. We’re creating an ecosystem — a
marketplace of partners who have joined us to figure things out and contribute.
Why do you think biodiversity, ecosystem loss and nature restoration are overlooked when competing with other sustainability issues that must be addressed?
EBDC: Because it’s even more complex than just talking about carbon. We tend
to focus on the things that are in the mainstream. That’s why we made a decision
to focus on nature and biodiversity. We are trying to establish that this is at
the center of it all.
Unless you are directly dependent on nature — like a food and agri business —
and it’s very apparent and there’s pressure to talk about these issues, business
may not. Also, legal partners — with all of their good intentions — may advise a
firm not to talk about [nature] because it then becomes more of a material risk.
What’s your assessment of what happened at COP28 in the context of what you are focusing on? Did we hear enough about biodiversity loss during the global negotiations?
EBDC: I think we’re going to have to push even further because the talk
about biodiversity and nature [didn’t happen]. But I tend not to be too
dependent on these types of events because agendas have already been set even
before you come in it. That’s just the reality of it.
I know there’s a lot of talk about what didn’t happen at
COP28;
and it’s just quite natural when we’re frustrated to focus on that kind of
discourse. I tend to go the other direction and say, ‘Okay, what can we focus
on? What can we do?’ That’s what we’re going to be doing.
How do you work with your clients and partners? What sort of support are you giving them?
EBDC: So, part of the burning need right now is a compliance framework. A
lot of our clients are thinking about the Corporate Sustainability Reporting
Directive
(CSRD), if they're exporting to the EU. And they’re trying to understand
how they even begin to look at their nature dependencies and
risk.
There are a lot of nature-intelligence
platforms
out there; and what we believe differentiates us is the business model that
we're putting together. We want to bring all of the different solutions that are
already out there together, so we can focus on the things that get left out —
because no one company can do it all.
More importantly, we understand culturally how something like this could work
within an organization. If we don’t solve the change-management component of
this, it’s not really going to matter what solution you put out there; it’s not
going to stick.
So, does that mean you offer an advisory or consultancy service alongside the software platform?
EBDC: Yes, we are coupling it with advisory services — whether that comes
from myself, my extended team or consultants that we’ve partnered with.
You talk about giving nature a position in the Boardroom. Can you explain what you mean by that?
EBDC: We are creating the infrastructure to have nature’s voice heard as a
co-founder and company director. We’re going through that process with the
Earth Law Center and we will be explaining
more about this in 2024.
Is this about giving companies the tools to think differently, or is this more practical support in terms of embedding nature-positive strategies into businesses?
EBDC: That depends on the company. But the idea is for the whole Board to be
trained in understanding our relationship with nature. Because if we are nature,
we should be more relational reciprocal; and we shouldn’t be extractive. It’s a
mindset shift — but there are also legal documents and language that can be used
to hold the board accountable to those values. And there are conflict-resolution
options available to go through the whole process. In our case, we actually want
representation from Indigenous communities as part of nature’s voice. So, we’re
figuring out how to offer that pathway.
In order to help companies along the way and to help focus minds, what are the key things that need to change in order to accelerate your work?
EBDC: Regulation would definitely help. A number of NGOs have signed a
petition to EU regulators to make sure that the CSRD is interoperable with
everything else in defining what good business conduct is.
It is confusing enough for companies to figure out what is the standard; and if
[different standards] are asking for different things, it distracts people from
focusing on implementation because people are stuck on the planning. That’s part
of the reason why we’re following a management-system approach in our product,
where we move you from planning to implementation.
As ever, there is a real need for collaboration, too — isn’t there?
EBDC: Yes, our end customers cannot be successful if the people that support
them don’t have the same support. Take farmers as an example. In order for them
to get sustainability certified, they would have to spend so much money that
they don’t really have. So, how do we create a system where you can have
accountability and demonstrate integrity without burdening the people who don’t
have anything? It goes back to rethinking our economic paradigm where it’s
equitable to begin with.
So, as we head into the new year, what’s the focus for Context Nature in 2024?
EBDC: Well, we have lots of interested pilot customers; so we will
definitely be doing testing with them — and we want the Sustainable Brands
community to participate.
We also intend to contribute to some thought leadership around nature and
biodiversity-investment
work
and we will be partnering with universities on research. We’re also building out
our team.
How optimistic are you about the future and business’ commitment to valuing nature?
EBDC: It’s easy to fall into despair, but I think we have things that we can
still do together that we should still be hopeful about. I have to remain
optimistic, because I can’t let the negative drain our energy.
And we have some amazing collaborators and partners all around the world that
are part of a strong network. They know what we’ve done before; there’s
credibility and we can’t break that trust. So, we have to keep going.
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Content creator extraordinaire.
Tom is founder of storytelling strategy firm Narrative Matters — which helps organizations develop content that truly engages audiences around issues of global social, environmental and economic importance. He also provides strategic editorial insight and support to help organisations – from large corporates, to NGOs – build content strategies that focus on editorial that is accessible, shareable, intelligent and conversation-driving.
Published Dec 18, 2023 8am EST / 5am PST / 1pm GMT / 2pm CET