Embedding biodiversity and ecosystem services in corporate sustainability: A strategy to enable Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals are a powerful lever to mainstream sustainability priorities in business' strategies and operations. At the same time, a new corporate sustainability based on a strategic understanding and management of biodiversity and ecosystem services is key to enact the new agenda for development. With the aim to better understand how businesses can operationalize the Agenda 2030, authors adopt a transdisciplinary approach and carry out an analysis of selected Italian business practices focused on biodiversity and ecosystem services management. Through a content analysis method and with the contribution of practitioners and experts, the main impacts of the practices have then been reconciled with the new framework for development. Finally, from primary data collected and further supported by semistructured interviews with company representatives (sustainability and environmental departments), authors propose a conceptual model that connects strategic biodiversity and ecosystem services management, its drivers and barriers, with the Sustainable Development Goals.