Not long into the opening ceremony of IPBES-12 (the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, coined the ‘Business and Biodiversity’ conference), an uncomfortable tension surfaced.
The delegation from the Democratic Republic of the Congo took the floor to question how the United States had been able to withdraw so easily from its commitments. Refusing to speak in English, they returned repeatedly throughout the week to the same pointed challenge: why should countries like theirs be held liable for biodiversity loss driven by companies headquartered elsewhere, particularly in the United States? Yet the force of their intervention was undercut by a stark reality: many of the corporate actors their remarks were directed at were simply not in the room.
It was a moment that crystallised a deeper unease running through the Manchester meeting. Beneath the language of partnership and engagement, difficult questions lingered. Are corporations participating out of genuine commitment, or reputational necessity? Is biodiversity emerging as a more politically palatable environmental focus than carbon emissions? And does the withdrawal of the US fundamentally weaken efforts to hold multinational companies accountable for ecological harm?
IPBES is often described as the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) for biodiversity. It brings together governments, scientists, Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs), and other knowledge holders to produce authoritative, policy-relevant assessments. Yet, like the IPCC, IPBES is not policy prescriptive. It assesses, but it refrains from actually legislating.
As an observer part of the broader academic delegation, I found these tensions impossible to ignore.
Much of the week reflected this careful, and arguably weak, position. Delegates were divided into working groups, painstakingly negotiating the wording of the assessment line by line. Working Group I focused on the Summary for Policymakers, interrogating how businesses both depend upon and impact biodiversity. Working Group II addressed the platform’s broader functions and priorities for future assessments. The process was meticulous, technical, and at times painfully slow. It is a reminder that in international environmental governance, language and interpretation of the text holds the real power. Seemingly minor phrasing carries significant political weight. References to oil and gas as drivers of biodiversity harm were repeatedly contested at the conference, with petrostates pushing to dilute or remove them altogether. Each proposed deletion prompted backlash, and negotiations frequently stretched late into the night. Much of the conference’s energy was absorbed by pedantic disputes over definition and re-definition, as if refining language could substitute for confronting the structural drivers of biodiversity loss. In this context, the DRC delegation stood apart. By refusing the procedural comfort of English and pressing their political challenge directly, they were among the few pushing for something materially significant, even if their intervention was largely sidelined.
For a conference framed around business engagement, however, corporate presence was strikingly thin. Conservation Master’s students such as myself appeared to outnumber business executives. On one level, this was refreshing: a welcome contrast to the lobbying saturation seen at COP climate summits. On another, it raised doubts about how deeply the private sector is prepared to engage with the findings of the assessment.
The more substantive business engagement occurred on the margins. In side events, figures such as Jo Harrison of United Utilities outlined the tangible links between ecosystem health and corporate risk: biodiversity loss threatens water quality, while increasing climate unpredictability destabilises operations. These arguments were persuasive, but also familiar. They framed nature as infrastructure, essential only because it underpins profitability.
More difficult was the question of intrinsic value. While some executives spoke of commitments extending beyond immediate material gain, the dominant framing throughout the week presented biodiversity as economically instrumental. Nature was showcased as something to be safeguarded only when financially necessary, integrated into balance sheets, managed, and mitigated. This approach may be pragmatic, even necessary to bring business to the table. But it also narrows the moral horizon of conservation, because when biodiversity is defended primarily in terms of risk management and return on investment, such protection becomes conditional.
The intervention from the DRC delegation lingered in this context. Their concerns were acknowledged in corridors and side conversations, yet the structural inequities they highlighted felt only partially reflected in the negotiated text. Countries rich in biodiversity but poor in political leverage remain central to the discussion, but not always to the decision-making.
IPBES-12 sought to align business and biodiversity. It succeeded in articulating the dependencies between economic systems and ecological systems with increasing clarity. Whether it succeeded in confronting the asymmetries of responsibility and power that underlie biodiversity loss is far less certain.
If biodiversity is to be more than a new corporate metric, the uncomfortable questions raised in Manchester cannot remain procedural interruptions, but must shape the substance of the agenda itself.