“The “Biodiversity Moonshot” should be understood as both a symbolic and practical catalyst for a profound rethinking of the business–nature relationship. Rather than a mere branding exercise, it represents an urgent call to reimagine the foundations of corporate purpose, strategy, and systems.” (Testa et al., 2025)
Biodiversity has recently gained increased attention in sustainability management research. It sustains the ecosystems on which organizations depend, while simultaneously being threatened by organizational activities. By highlighting this dynamic of impact and dependence, the integration of biodiversity into management discourse offers an opportunity to foster a more holistic understanding of the business–nature relationship, grounded in a systems perspective.
At the same time, however, there is a risk that biodiversity will be reduced to yet another environmental variable subsumed within the prevailing business-case logic that views nature primarily as a source of economic value. This approach has proven inadequate to drive the transformative change needed to address the environmental crisis.
Drawing on a discussion among scholars, this essay outlines six critical challenges—measurement, strategic decision making, innovation, public policy, interdisciplinary approaches, and dominant ontologies—which, depending on how they are addressed, may either catalyze a rethinking of the business–nature relationship or merely perpetuate existing paradigms
Francesco Testa, Alberto Di Minin, Duccio Tosi, Valentina Cucino, Gianmaria Ontano, Michael V. Russo, Frederik Dahlmann, Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee, Andrea Stevenson Thorpe, Frank Figge, Philip Shapira, Kerrigan Marie Machado Unter, Judith Walls, Nicole Darnall, Adam McCarthy, Priscila Ferri, Claire Holland, and Jacopo Cricchio. (2025). The Biodiversity Moonshot: A Spark for a Transformative Change or a New Business-Case Facade? Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/beer.70013 [Open Access]
Philip Shapira 