The uncomfortable relationship between business and biodiversity: Advancing research on business strategies for biodiversity protection

The primary purpose of this article is to stimulate research on business strategies for biodiversity protection. To do so, the article first clarifies that, contrary to a common misperception that biodiversity loss is caused only by a handful of industries, practically all industries are responsible for biodiversity loss. Second, the article organizes corporate biodiversity protection strategies into four connected yet distinct categories based on temporal and spatial dimensions, namely, conservation, restoration, compensation, and reparation. Third, the article illustrates the unsettled nature of the field and the continuing debates amongst conservation biologists as to the best approaches to biodiversity management. To facilitate future research and guide practice, the article distills three key messages: (i) instead of a one-size-fits-all principle, biodiversity protection and communication strategies should be guided by how an industry (or a company) primarily causes biodiversity loss; (ii) theorization in the field can be organized around four biodiversity protection strategies (conservation, restoration, compensation, and reparation), which can also serve as the main biodiversity performance assessment and reporting parameters; and (iii) effective and implementable biodiversity protection strategies will emerge only from interdisciplinary collaborations amongst corporate sustainability scholars and conservation biologists.