Hi there,

It was a real pleasure connecting with you at Food4Future Bilbao. We wanted to take a moment to introduce Natplus and give you a better sense of who we are and what we do.

Where to Catch us at F4F Bilbao

Thu 15 May | 13:00 - 14:00: Leveraging advanced technologies to enhance logistics and operations | Innovation Area by AZTI

Tue 13 May - Thu 15 May: FATE Pavilion | Stand C301

Plus, Natplus has been selected to take part in the FoodTech Startup Forum:

Wed 14 May, 16:40 - 18:10: FoodTech Startup Forum | Startup Theatre by CNTA - EATEX

Our Story

Nature is intricate—and that complexity often leads businesses to shy away from measuring their impact on it. But if companies don’t understand how their products affect the land, ecosystems, and biodiversity around them, how can they truly know the impact they’re having on the planet?

That’s exactly why Natplus exists.

Founded by Alexander Koch, whose journey began with the United Nations in 2005, we bring 18 years of global experience across 50 countries—combined with advanced, science-based digital tools—to help food businesses identify and address their most critical impact areas across complex global value chains.

We turn that complexity into clear, actionable insights—enabling food businesses trace supply chains back to their interface with nature, assess site-specific risks and impacts, and act on the most material ones.

Through our 3 easy steps—Trace, Assess, Act—your business will be on its way to to set meaningful nature-positive targets and transition to a nature-positive business with ease, as well as complying with regulation such as CSRD, EUDR and TFND.

See the Platform in Action

Curious to see what this looks like in practice? Click here to book a tailored demo—we’ll walk you through how it works and what it could mean for your business.

Connect with Us

Let’s keep the conversation going:

• Connect with Alexander Koch, Founder & CEO
• Connect with Sarah Heaney, Head of Marketing
• Check out our LinkedIn
• Meet the rest of our team

Get to Know More About Natplus

• Download our pitch deck
• Visit our website
• Click here to book a free tailored demo

Looking forward to staying in touch.

Warm regards,
The Natplus Team

In today’s business landscape, companies are inundated with vast amounts of data but often struggle to extract meaningful and actionable insights—particularly in relation to nature and biodiversity. Biodiversity loss, ecosystem services, and land use reporting have become increasingly critical issues, yet the inconsistency and sheer volume of data frequently leave businesses uncertain about where to begin. 

What businesses truly require is structured, transparent, and actionable data. Companies need support in filtering through complex datasets to identify priorities and determine the actions that will have the most significant impact. In this article, we examine the risks of data overload, strategies to mitigate these challenges, and the role of AI in facilitating efficient and targeted nature-data analysis. 

The State of Biodiversity and Business 

Biodiversity loss has been identified as one of the most pressing global risks, with the potential to disrupt supply chains, business operations, and entire economies. When ecosystems fail, supply chains fail. Despite this, many businesses have prioritized climate targets over biodiversity initiatives. 

While many employees recognize that their organizations could be doing more to address biodiversity concerns, a lack of resources and expertise frequently prevents significant progress, with 4 in 5 sustainability professionals stating that their businesses are not doing enough to address nature and biodiversity (The State of Biodiversity and Business Report 2024, Trellis Group). 

Meanwhile, regulatory pressures and investor expectations for greater transparency regarding nature-related impacts continue to increase, requiring companies to take decisive action. 

Essential Questions for Businesses: 

• Are you fully aware of where your raw materials and ingredients originate? 
• Do you have a comprehensive understanding of how your business impacts nature? 
• Are you aware of the ecosystem services on which your products depend? 
• Are you prepared to comply with emerging regulations and frameworks such as CSRD, EUDR, and TNFD? 

For many businesses, the answer to these questions is unclear. The interconnected nature of ecosystems means that a disturbance to a single species can have cascading effects, making impact assessments complex. As companies face increasing regulatory obligations, they frequently struggle to determine the appropriate starting point for compliance. 

The Risks of Data Overwhelm 

The rapid increase in available data has created a phenomenon known as decision paralysis. This is especially true in today’s data-driven world, where 74% of professionals report that the number of decisions they make daily has increased tenfold since 2020. 

When dealing with nature-related data, which often involves intricate, multi-layered relationships, businesses encounter several risks: 

• Decision paralysis – Uncertainty about where to begin results in inaction. 
• Inefficiency – The process of manually sorting through large volumes of unstructured data wastes time and resources. 
• Erroneous decision-making – Misinterpretation of data can lead to regulatory compliance issues and operational setbacks. 
• Reputational damage – Lack of clarity and misrepresentation of sustainability efforts can result in accusations of greenwashing. 

Addressing Data Overload Through AI-Driven Solutions 

The concept of "drowning in data but starving for insights" is more relevant than ever. Without the appropriate tools, businesses find it challenging to navigate biodiversity metrics, carbon sequestration data, and ecosystem assessments. AI-powered solutions provide a path forward by enabling companies to streamline their approach to nature-related data management. 

1. Overcoming Data Overload 

Challenge: Companies struggle to assess the impact of raw material sourcing due to an overwhelming volume of data from supplier disclosures, ecosystem reports, and satellite imagery. 

Solution: AI-Driven Data Processing & Risk Mapping 

Geospatial analysis can efficiently analyze diverse datasets to evaluate the effects of sourcing on endangered ecosystems, deforestation risks, and areas of water stress. 

2. Improving Data Quality 

Challenge: Outdated or inconsistent supplier reports lead to inaccurate environmental assessments and regulatory non-compliance. 

Solution: AI-Powered Data Cleansing 

By identifying and correcting inconsistencies in satellite imagery, supplier documentation, and habitat assessments, data refining tools ensure that biodiversity data remains accurate and reliable. 

3. Extracting Actionable Insights 

Challenge: Businesses recognize biodiversity risks within their supply chains but lack clarity on how to mitigate them. 

Solution: AI for Insight Generation 

Automated insight generation tools can uncover patterns within biodiversity and supply chain interactions, enabling companies to prioritize effective sustainability initiatives based on data-driven insights. 

The Role of Data Transparency in Regulatory Compliance 

As global environmental regulations evolve, businesses face increasing pressure to disclose their nature-related impacts with greater accuracy and consistency. Transparent, well-structured data is no longer optional—it is essential for meeting compliance requirements and avoiding financial and reputational risks. 

Companies must ensure that their biodiversity and ecosystem data is accessible, verifiable, and aligned with regulatory standards. Without transparency, businesses risk misreporting their environmental impact, leading to compliance violations and accusations of greenwashing. 

Key Regulations Requiring Transparent Nature-Related Data: 

1. EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) 

The EUDR aims to minimize the EU’s contribution to global deforestation and forest degradation by requiring businesses to prove that their products do not originate from deforested areas or illegal production. Transparent supply chain data enables companies to track sourcing locations, assess deforestation risks, and submit verifiable due diligence reports. 

2. Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) 

TNFD provides a framework for companies to assess and disclose their dependencies and impacts on nature. Transparent data collection helps businesses map their supply chains, identify high-risk biodiversity areas, and produce standardized reports that align with investor and regulatory expectations. 

3. Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) 

Under the CSRD, companies must disclose how their activities affect people and the environment, including biodiversity and ecosystem impacts. Clear and structured data is critical for identifying ecosystem services that businesses rely upon, measuring operational risks, and producing accurate impact assessments. 

By prioritizing transparency in their environmental data, companies can strengthen regulatory compliance, enhance investor trust, and contribute to meaningful biodiversity conservation efforts. 

Lessons from Supply Chain Transparency Across Industries 

Supply chain transparency is essential for ensuring sustainability, regulatory compliance, and consumer trust. Businesses that lack clear visibility into their supply chains risk reputational damage, regulatory penalties, and operational inefficiencies. The following industries highlight the increasing need for verifiable data on sourcing and environmental impact: 

Food Industry 

Consumers are demanding greater transparency regarding the origins of ingredients and raw materials. To meet these expectations—and comply with sustainability regulations—food companies must implement robust tracking systems that ensure traceability, responsible sourcing, and adherence to biodiversity protection standards. 

Fashion and Apparel Industry 

The fashion industry faces significant scrutiny due to its reliance on complex global supply chains, often linked to deforestation, water pollution, and unethical labor practices. Brands must ensure transparency across their sourcing processes, from raw material extraction to production and distribution. Implementing traceability tools and supplier disclosures can help companies verify sustainability claims, reduce environmental impact, and meet regulatory expectations. 

Beauty and Personal Care Industry 

As consumers and regulatory bodies demand greater accountability, beauty brands are under pressure to disclose the origins of their ingredients—especially those derived from natural resources. Industry leaders have responded by forming coalitions such as TRASCE and NATRUE, which promote supplier data transparency and standardized sustainability reporting. 

Given their high dependence on natural resources and ecosystem services, these industries are particularly vulnerable to the risks associated with biodiversity loss and environmental degradation.

Companies that proactively enhance supply chain transparency not only mitigate regulatory and reputational risks but also contribute to long-term environmental resilience and sustainable business practices. 

Moving Towards Structured, Actionable Nature-Related Data 

In conclusion, more data does not inherently lead to better decision-making. Businesses need structured, transparent, and actionable data to make informed sustainability decisions. Open data models and improved supply chain transparency offer key advantages: 

• The ability to accurately track supplier impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems. 
• Better risk assessments to support responsible and sustainable sourcing. 
• Compliance-ready reports that align with evolving regulatory requirements and investor expectations. 

By leveraging AI and data-driven strategies, businesses can transition from data paralysis to actionable insights, ultimately driving real-world improvements in nature conservation and corporate sustainability. 

At natplus, we are helping businesses do exactly that.  

Natplus helps you manage your organization's biodiversity impacts through targeted, easy-to-digest data. Our AI-powered, science-based platform helps businesses filter out the richest nature-based data and assess, trace, and report their nature-related impacts with just a few clicks.​ 

We are helping businesses move towards nature-positive strategies, with ease.  

Find out more about what we do here and book a free demo of our AI digital platform today. 

Over the past 150 years, deforestation and fossil fuel burning have pushed Earth's resilience to its limits. However, hope remains - nature absorbs 56% of CO₂ emissions, acting as a natural carbon buffer. It also provides essential resources for industries such as food, fashion, and cosmetics. To ensure both business and planetary resilience, investing in nature must be seen as a core economic priority. 

Nature investment is gaining momentum. Private funding for nature-focused initiatives surged from $9.4 billion to $102 billion in just four years, while biodiversity bonds increased from 5% in 2020 to 16% in 2023. Much of this funding supports nature restoration projects and carbon credit schemes. While beneficial, many of these efforts occur outside companies’ supply chains, failing to address the root causes of environmental degradation. 

To address these root causes, businesses must go beyond external initiatives and assess how their own operations affect nature. Only by integrating nature-positive strategies into their own operations and supply chains can companies mitigate risks such as supply chain shocks and regulatory non-compliance while ensuring long-term sustainability. 

Business Impacts on Nature 

Many industries contribute significantly to environmental degradation. Addressing these impacts within supply chains is critical for long-term sustainability and compliance. 

Industries Most at Risk of Nature Non-Compliance 

Agriculture & Food 

• Responsible for 80% of global deforestation and 70% of biodiversity loss. 
• Within this sector, just seven agricultural commodities - cattle, oil palm, soy, cocoa, rubber, coffee and plantation wood fiber - accounted for more than a quarter of recent tree cover loss around the world. In some countries, the impact can be even more significant: For example, 70% of Ivory Coast’s illegal deforestation is linked to cocoa plantations.  

Cosmetics 

• Dependence on palm oil leads to habitat destruction for species like orangutans and tigers. 43% percent of Tesso Nilo National Park in Sumatra—which was established to provide habitat for the endangered Sumatran Tiger—has now been overrun with illegal palm oil plantings. 
• Overharvesting of natural ingredients such as shea butter and argan oil depletes resources. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, shea trees maintain a vulnerable conservation status on the IUCN Red List mainly due to extensive human activity and climate change pressures. 
• Many beauty products create a high demand for natural oils, leading to extensive and intensive cultivation, harming natural habitats through deforestation, and contaminating soil and water through pesticides and fertilizers. 

Fashion 

• Wool, silk, and fur industries contribute to habitat destruction and overgrazing. 70% of pastureland in Mongolia is estimated to have been degraded to some extent through a combination of climate change and overgrazing, for cashmere wool. 
• The leather industry drives deforestation and methane emissions from cattle farming. In Brazil, land clearing to raise cattle killed for food and fashion is responsible for 80% of the Amazon’s deforestation. 
• Water overuse: Producing a single cotton T-shirt requires 2,700 liters of water, equivalent to a person's water consumption over 2.5 years. 

Nature Impacts Throughout the Supply Chain 

Environmental degradation occurs at every stage of the supply chain, often hidden by complex global networks. Without tracing and measuring these impacts, businesses cannot manage them effectively. 

• Raw material sourcing: Deforestation, soil depletion, and habitat destruction. 
• Production processes: Water overuse, pollution, and excessive waste. 
• Distribution & logistics: Carbon emissions from transportation. 
• End-of-life product disposal: Waste management and landfill overflow. 

In other words, the root cause of environmental degradation lies in the way that businesses produce, distribute and dispose of their products. So this is what businesses need to focus on to reduce degradation. Ignoring their own supply chain impacts while investing in external restoration projects elsewhere doesn’t fix the problem that causes the degradation – so it is inefficient and ineffective. True nature investment requires businesses to change how they operate, not just how they donate. 

Internal vs. External Nature Investment 

Nature investment supports the health and restoration of ecosystems. The most effective approach is improving operations and supply chains to be less nature-invasive and transitioning to a nature-positive business model. 

In doing so, rather than focusing solely on external conservation efforts, businesses should prioritize in-house nature investments: 

• Supply chain transparency tools to understand where your raw materials are coming from, and to monitor and minimize their environmental impacts. 
• Sourcing of sustainable raw materials, to ensure that what goes into your products doesn’t harm nature. 
• Sustainable land use to maintain soil health, reduce water consumption and ensure long-term resource availability throughout your supply chains. 

For many businesses, these steps can seem overwhelming. That’s why we advise to follow a three-step approach: 

1. Trace – Use AI and data integration tools to map where your business interacts with nature and identify the main supply chain impacts. Understanding what is happening to nature when you produce is a great first step. 
2. Assess – Leverage analytical talent and AI tools to transform complex environmental data into actionable insights and clear action plans, prioritizing high-risk areas and vulnerable species. Knowing where to start, and where your action will have the biggest benefit to nature, is another huge step forward. 
3. Report – Translate findings into sustainability reports for regulatory compliance and strategic decision-making. This is a legal requirement for many businesses due to regulations such as the Corporate Social Responsibility Directive (CSRD) and the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). Automating a large part of these reports allows you to focus your time on driving meaningful change. 

Don't Let Perfection Stand in the Way of Progress. 

The key is to start—even with a broad understanding—of where your biggest impacts lie and which actions will bring the greatest benefits. Trying to tackle everything at once can be overwhelming and lead to paralysis. Instead, focus on identifying and prioritizing a few key actions, improving step by step. Progress matters more than perfection. 

Benefits of Nature Investment 

Investing in nature is not just about mitigating harm - it offers significant strategic advantages: 

• Financial Benefits – 50% of global GDP depends on nature. Investing in nature-based solutions could save $104 billion by 2030. 
• Risk Mitigation – Preventing soil degradation ensures long-term agricultural productivity. Environmental damages from fossil fuels, agriculture, and fisheries could cost the global economy $10-25 trillion annually. 
• Regulatory Compliance – Easily comply with regulations such CSRD and EUDR, and guidelines such as TNFD (Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures). 
• Business Resilience – Healthy ecosystems provide stability against nature-related disruptions, such as supply chain shocks. 

10 Key Actions for Nature Investment 

1. 🌱 Prioritize Biodiversity – Allocate resources to biodiversity protection alongside emissions reduction. 
2. 🤝 Collaborate for Impact – Partner with stakeholders, NGOs, and governments to drive systemic change. 
3. 🖥️ Use AI & Analytics – Leverage technology to make nature impact reporting and regulatory compliance easier. 
4. 🌳 Embed Nature in Decision-Making – Align products and operations with environmental taxonomies. 
5. 🎯 Set High-Impact Targets – Work with key clients to reduce environmental harm and enhance sustainability disclosure. 
6. 📝 Leverage Existing Disclosures – Utilize climate, deforestation, and water security reports for nature risk assessment. 
7. 🌍 Integrate Nature in Risk Management – Make nature-related risks a core part of business strategy. 
8. 🤝 Develop Science-Based Transition Plans – Set measurable goals for climate and nature impact reduction. 
9. 📉 Phase Out Harmful Activities – Gradually eliminate practices that contribute to environmental degradation. 
10. 🥇 Lead by Example – Take action despite market hesitation - leadership drives industry-wide change. 

Ready to Make a Difference? 

At natplus we specialize in tracing, assessment, and reporting of nature-related risks and impacts throughout your supply chain. Our AI-powered, science-based tools, combined with expert guidance from our nature consultants, provide you with the insights and strategies needed to invest in nature and help your business become nature-positive.

All via our easy-to-use, automated platform – so you can seamlessly comply with nature, all in one place.​ 

Visit our website to explore how we can support your journey toward sustainable, resilient and nature-positive operations, and book a demo of our platform today.