Climate & Nature (C&N) Monitor

The Climate & Nature Monitor is a branch of the SDA Bocconi Nature Lab focused on the intersection of climate change and nature degradation as interconnected business challenges. The Monitor provides companies, investors, and institutions with research-grounded intelligence, practical guidelines, and a trusted space for informed debate — helping business leaders navigate an increasingly complex regulatory, financial, and ecological landscape.

Why the Climate & Nature Monitor?

Climate change and nature degradation are no longer separate challenges. They form an interconnected set of physical, transitional, and systemic risks that directly affect corporate strategy, finance, and operations — yet many organizations still lack the knowledge and frameworks to address them with confidence.

On the climate side, rising temperatures, decarbonization requirements, and evolving carbon markets are reshaping competitive landscapes. On the nature side, ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss are generating financial and operational risks that investors and regulators are increasingly unwilling to overlook. The two are deeply intertwined: nature loss amplifies climate risk, and climate change accelerates biodiversity loss.

The Monitor is built on the recognition that companies are embedded in socio-ecological systems — they depend on nature while contributing to its degradation, and are increasingly held accountable for both. With over half of global GDP estimated to be moderately or highly dependent on natural systems, and with regulation evolving rapidly across both domains — from CSRD and EU Taxonomy to TNFD and the COP15 biodiversity framework — the need for credible, science-based, business-oriented guidance has never been greater.

A Community of Practice for Climate & Nature

Most climate and nature challenges are wicked problems — complex, systemic issues that resist straightforward solutions due to their interconnected and evolving nature. Addressing them requires collaboration across disciplines, organizations, and sectors, giving rise to what researchers call social learning: collaborative, team-based approaches to problems that no single actor can solve alone.

The Monitor is designed as a community of practice: a trusted, neutral space where companies can develop knowledge and judgment together, before issues go mainstream. By engaging on an ongoing basis, members deepen their understanding collectively — combining academic rigor with practitioner experience to build business-oriented responses to challenges that are still poorly understood and rapidly changing.

Navigating decarbonization, carbon markets, nature strategies, and biodiversity frameworks requires managers to build new competencies — and to do so in the right environment. The Monitor offers senior leaders access to the people and institutions shaping climate and nature markets, a space to share their own critical challenges, and the opportunity to learn how peers and experts across sectors are addressing them.

Purpose and Strategic Objectives

The Monitor pursues three interconnected objectives:

Generating and disseminating strategic knowledge on climate and nature risks, market instruments, and emerging regulatory frameworks
Supporting companies in designing informed strategies at the climate–nature nexus, from decarbonization and adaptation to biodiversity and nature-positive pathways
Fostering a Community of Practice where managers, researchers, and institutions engage in peer learning and cross-sector dialogue in a trusted, neutral setting

Activities

Research & Knowledge Generation
The Monitor produces a series of reports on strategically relevant topics at the climate–nature nexus. Member companies can contribute to shaping both the research agenda and its content, ensuring relevance to real business challenges. Topics include voluntary carbon markets, biodiversity credits and nature-based instruments, climate risk and adaptation, Scope 3 accounting, and the implications of the climate–nature–finance nexus for investment. The Monitor's Year 1 Flagship Report — co-designed with partners — serves as a landmark study that establishes the identity and methodology of the initiative.
Cross-fertilization, Engagement & Expert Access
Three in-person Roundtable meetings per year, hosted at SDA Bocconi in Milan, bring together member companies around topics selected for their strategic relevance. Each session combines high-level academic inputs with practitioner perspectives and structured discussion. Optional webinars complement the programme by addressing specific emerging issues as they arise.
Policy Dialogue and Constructive Engagement
The Monitor develops targeted position papers to support informed dialogue with policymakers — including EU institutions and national ministries — as well as standard-setting bodies and international organizations. The objective is to help member companies move from reactive compliance to proactive, constructive engagement with the evolving regulatory and policy landscape.