ISO 17298 marks a major milestone in biodiversity integration for business. Discover how this new international standard helps organisations assess nature-related risks and embed biodiversity into strategy and how expert support can accelerate adoption.
What is ISO 17298?
Published in October 2025 and launched at ISO’s annual meeting in Kigali, ISO 17298 is the first global standard designed to help organisations systematically integrate biodiversity into strategy, governance and operations. Developed by ISO Technical Committee 331, with experts from more than 60 countries, the standard reflects growing global momentum to embed nature into corporate decision-making.
As ISO’s Head of Sustainability and Partnerships, Noelia Garcia Nebra, noted: “The standard embeds biodiversity into core governance and risk management practices – not just sustainability reporting – ensuring alignment with global expectations and organisational operations.”
ISO 17298 provides a practical, scalable framework for organisations to:
- Assess their dependencies and impacts on nature
- Identify nature-related risks and opportunities
- Develop measurable actions to reduce exposure to biodiversity loss
- Improve resilience and operational performance
- Build trust with regulators, investors and public.
Why does the ISO 17298 biodiversity standard matter?
As the operational, financial and regulatory implications of nature loss become clearer, integrating biodiversity into corporate decision-making is no longer optional. Studies estimate that more than half of global GDP is moderately or highly dependent on nature, and up to US$5 trillion could be lost annually due to nature-related risk. Against this backdrop, companies and investors are increasingly expected to disclose their impacts and dependencies through frameworks such as the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) and to take steps to avoid, reduce and mitigate them.
Yet, for many organisations, evaluating biodiversity impacts and dependencies remains technically challenging and difficult to embed across business functions. The launch of ISO 17298: Biodiversity in strategy and operations provides the first internationally recognised standard to guide organisations through this process.
Why ISO 17298 matters for business
Until recently, companies wanting to address biodiversity faced a fragmented landscape of voluntary frameworks, tools and reporting expectations. Unlike climate, where shared standards and metrics have existed for years, biodiversity lacked a globally recognised management standard that could guide organisations from assessment through to action. This made it difficult for businesses to integrate nature into governance, risk management and day-to-day operations in a consistent and credible way.
ISO 17298 fills this gap. It provides a structured, operational framework that aligns with the major sustainability and disclosure systems already shaping corporate behaviour, including:
- TNFD, which sets out how organisations should identify, assess and disclose nature-related risks and opportunities
- Science Based Targets Network (SBTN), which provides science-based methods for setting nature targets
- ISO 14001, the global benchmark for environmental management systems
- ISO 26000, which guides organisations on social responsibility and stakeholder engagement
- Global Biodiversity Framework Target 15, which calls for corporate monitoring, assessment and disclosure of biodiversity impacts and dependencies.
By bringing these strands together, ISO 17298 offers a coherent approach that helps organisations move from high level commitments to practical implementation. Adopting ISO 17298 can help organisations to:
- identify and reduce exposure to nature-related financial risks
- align to regulatory reporting demands, such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)
- strengthen supply chain, operational and business model resilience
- unlock nature-positive finance by demonstrating credible actions to investors
- demonstrate leadership in sustainability reporting.
What does ISO 17298 require?
ISO 17298 sets out a clear sequence of steps for organisations to understand and prioritise their biodiversity impacts, dependencies, risks and opportunities. These steps form the basis of a robust biodiversity strategy.
Analyse impacts and dependencies: Organisations must identify how their activities interact with biodiversity, including ecosystem service dependencies; direct and indirect impacts; pressures such as land use, pollution or resource extraction; and proximity to critical habitats.
This analysis can be conducted using tools such as the ENCORE database, SBTN’s Materiality Screening Tool, a range of open-source geospatial data such as the Biodiversity Intactness Index and the World Resources Institute’s Aqueduct tools, and internal spatial data such as asset locations.
Assess risks and opportunities: The standard requires organisations to evaluate physical risks (e.g., supply chain disruption), transition risks (e.g., regulatory change) and opportunities for restoration, innovation or new markets. Issues must be prioritised based on materiality to the business and its supply chain.
Develop a biodiversity action plan: The action plan must include the following.
- A clear ambition
- SMART objectives
- Concrete actions
- Indicators for monitoring
- Consideration of local context and existing initiatives
This ensures that biodiversity commitments translate into measurable outcomes.
Monitor indicators and evaluate progress: ISO 17298 requires organisations to track performance through biodiversity indicators, analyse results and adjust actions through continual improvement.
Formalise a biodiversity strategy: The strategy must align with organisational priorities, stakeholder expectations and relevant sustainability frameworks.
Alongside these technical requirements, ISO 17298 includes general management system elements such as leadership involvement, resource allocation, roles and responsibilities, audits and stakeholder engagement.
How ISO 17298 aligns with TNFD and SBTN
One of the biggest challenges for organisations starting their biodiversity journey is understanding how the different frameworks fit together. ISO 17298, TNFD and SBTN each play a different role, but they are designed to work as a connected system rather than competing approaches.
ISO 17298 and TNFD: Doing vs. disclosing
TNFD tells companies what they should disclose about nature-related risks and opportunities. ISO 17298 helps companies do the work needed to generate that information.
TNFD’s LEAP approach — locate, evaluate, assess and prepare — guides organisations through the steps needed to understand their relationship with nature. ISO 17298 provides the operational processes, governance structures and action planning needed to carry out those steps in a consistent, auditable way.
For example, while TNFD’s LEAP approach tells an organisation what to evaluate in a high‑risk sourcing region, ISO 17298 requires the organisation to structure that work as an ongoing management process. Under ISO, each action must have a named responsible person, be integrated with existing policies and plans, have clear indicators, be documented and be periodically monitored and verified.
This turns a one‑off TNFD assessment into a repeatable, accountable and evidenced process embedded in the organisation’s governance
ISO 17298 and SBTN: Targets vs. implementation
SBTN defines the scientific requirements for credible nature targets and the actions needed to achieve them, including implementation considerations within Step 3+.
ISO 17298, meanwhile, provides a management system that helps organisations integrate nature considerations into governance, planning and monitoring. It enables companies to set and deliver nature-related objectives that are robust and auditable, even if they are not fully aligned with SBTN’s validation requirements.
In this way, SBTN establishes the scientific ‘North Star’, while ISO 17298 offers a practical organisational framework that can support but does not replace the delivery of SBTN-aligned ambition.
A coherent nature framework
Together, ISO 17298, TNFD and SBTN form a complete ecosystem for managing, measuring and reporting biodiversity:
| Framework | Primary purpose | What it helps organisations do |
|---|---|---|
| ISO 17298 | Operational management standard | Integrate biodiversity into strategy, governance and operations; develop action plans; and monitor progress |
| TNFD | Disclosure framework | Report nature-related risks, impacts, dependencies and opportunities in a consistent way |
| SBTN | Science-based target setting | Set credible, science-aligned targets for nature and ecosystem health |
Who can use ISO 17298?
One of the strengths of ISO 17298 is its flexibility. The standard is designed for any organisation, regardless of size, sector or geography. It can be applied at both:
• site level — such as production facilities, farms, regional operations or commercial zones
• organisational level — including corporate groups, public institutions or multinational operations.
- Large corporates looking to integrate biodiversity into enterprise-wide risk management and to align with TNFD, CSRD and International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) requirements
- Small and medium-sized enterprises wanting a manageable entry point
- Financial institutions assessing nature-related risks across portfolios.
- Banks, insurers and asset managers increasingly expected to understand how nature loss affects the companies they finance
- Strengthens due diligence processes for lending, underwriting or investment.
- Public bodies and local authorities managing land, infrastructure or rural assets
- Local authorities, public agencies and municipal bodies, which often manage parks, waterways, transport networks, public buildings and other assets that interact directly with biodiversity
Our expertise in supporting ISO 17298 adoption
To support this, Nature Positive offers a set of practical solutions that help organisations generate the insights ISO 17298 calls for, from understanding impacts and dependencies to monitoring progress over time. We help organisations map their ecosystem service dependencies and identify where operations or supply chains rely most heavily on nature. Our geospatial nature metrics capability provides location‑specific screening to highlight biodiversity‑sensitive areas, supporting the scoping and prioritisation steps required under the standard. For organisations needing a quantified view of pressures across their value chain, we offer biodiversity footprinting, which provides a structured way to assess land use change, pollution, resource extraction and other key drivers of biodiversity loss.
Together, these capabilities give organisations a practical pathway to implement ISO 17298 effectively, strengthen resilience, meet evolving disclosure requirements and contribute meaningfully to global nature goals.
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