Events in the Middle East these past weeks have brought into sharp focus a simple fact: businesses cannot operate in chaos.
Supply chains grind to a halt, prices skyrocket and investors lose confidence.
And yet, with that stark reality in mind, I wonder how people will have noticed a sobering UK Government report, quietly released earlier this year, which explicitly labelled global ecosystem collapse as a direct threat to UK national security.
The report, compiled by the Joint Intelligence Committee, is clear: nature loss is no longer just an ‘environmental’ issue, it is a material threat to our economic prosperity and wellbeing.
Despite this, leadership teams are often slow to come to terms with the commercial risks of ecosystem breakdown and nature loss. Nature is treated as a lowly philanthropic priority, an irrelevant afterthought, a ‘nice to have’.
But the reality is that every business depends on nature in some way.
SWT’s Nature & Business Literacy workshops were created to help leaders better understand this fact, and turn it into an opportunity.
What is Nature & Business Literacy?
Nature & Business Literacy is a series of workshops for business leaders run by SWT.
They are designed to equip business decision-makers with the insight, inspiration and tools needed to navigate nature risk and identify practical actions they can take.
Firstly, acknowledge the problem
Nature has been mispriced. Our economic systems have largely failed to account for nature’s value, effectively assigning a financial value of £0 to nature in decision making. See the brilliant Dasgupta review for more detail.
Globally, for every £1 that is deployed to benefit nature, £30 is spent on activities that harm nature (that’s $220 billion versus $7.1trillion).
This imbalance has driven the decline of ecosystems worldwide and it leaves businesses increasingly exposed to chaos.
Understanding this economic blind spot and the link between nature and business performance is a core aspect of the Nature & Business Literacy workshops.
The question is then how we make nature investable and start companies onto a nature-positive pathway.
Secondly, be inspired by solutions
There is good news. Nature is remarkably resilient and can recover at awesome speed when given the chance. Industry leaders are starting to invest into nature recovery; the financial value we assign to nature is starting to change.
The Nature & Business Literacy workshops explore examples of large-scale nature recovery and the commercial models and reporting frameworks that made these projects possible.
Nature is now being talked about as ‘living infrastructure’, something that needs as much investment as a new road network or a hospital.
Finally, move to action
Witnessing the workshop delivered for leaders in asset management, insurance, FMCG, travel, construction and major private landowners has been both insightful and inspiring.
Insightful to see where each business stands and where their main dependencies on nature are. Inspiring to hear pledges from leadership; be that through deploying resource to engage with nature-related reporting or futureproofing one’s supply chain through targeted nature restoration.
If any of the above is of interest to your leadership team, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Will Kelsey
March 2026