Digital construction businesses face rising biodiversity risks reshaping investment, regulation, supply chains, and infrastructure delivery priorities.
The global digital construction sector, including firms delivering infrastructure, smart cities, and BIM-enabled projects, increasingly depends on ecosystems that support water availability, climate regulation, material supply chains and community resilience. A landmark assessment from the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) now warns that biodiversity loss is not an environmental issue alone but a systemic economic threat affecting every business, including those operating across digital construction and infrastructure delivery.
The IPBES Methodological Assessment Report on the Impact and Dependence of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People concludes that companies must either lead transformative change or risk long-term decline. Approved by over 150 member governments during the IPBES Plenary in Manchester, the report provides evidence that current economic models continue to degrade nature while failing to account for the risks this creates for financial systems, supply chains and built environment development.
For digital construction companies increasingly tasked with delivering sustainable infrastructure, this assessment provides critical guidance for integrating biodiversity risk management into project planning, procurement and asset operation.
Why biodiversity matters
Digital construction firms may appear disconnected from biodiversity, yet the sector relies heavily on ecosystem services. Infrastructure projects depend on stable land systems, water supply, flood regulation, raw material sourcing and resilient local communities.
Loss of biodiversity disrupts these systems, increasing risks to construction timelines, material availability and long-term asset performance. Flooding, land degradation and supply chain volatility directly impact project costs and investor confidence.
The IPBES report emphasises that businesses often bear little financial cost for ecological damage while struggling to monetise positive environmental outcomes. As regulation tightens globally, companies that fail to integrate biodiversity considerations risk compliance challenges and investment withdrawal.
Matt Jones, Co-chair of the assessment, explains: “This Report draws on thousands of sources, bringing together years of research and practice into a single integrated framework that shows both the risks of nature loss to business, and the opportunities for business to help reverse this.”
He adds a stark warning for business leaders:“Businesses and other key actors can either lead the way towards a more sustainable global economy or ultimately risk extinction…both of species in nature, but potentially also their own.”
Business-as-usual investment threatens sustainable infrastructure development
The assessment highlights a funding imbalance that directly affects the sustainable construction transition. In 2023, global public and private finance flows with negative impacts on nature reached approximately $7.3 trillion, compared with only $220 billion directed toward biodiversity conservation and restoration.
This imbalance continues to incentivise environmentally damaging practices across sectors supplying the construction industry, including mining, land conversion and resource extraction.
Prof. Stephen Polasky, Co-chair of the assessment, explains: “The loss of biodiversity is among the most serious threats to business. Yet the twisted reality is that it often seems more profitable to businesses to degrade biodiversity than to protect it.”
He continues: “Business as usual may once have seemed profitable in the short term, but impacts across multiple businesses can have cumulative effects… which can cross ecological tipping points.”
For digital construction firms working under ESG investment requirements and sustainability procurement frameworks, failure to address biodiversity risk threatens project viability and long-term profitability.
Measuring biodiversity impacts in digital construction and infrastructure projects
The IPBES report finds that although methods exist to measure business impacts on biodiversity, adoption remains low across industries. Fewer than one percent of publicly reporting companies mention biodiversity impacts in corporate disclosures.
Financial institutions cite three major barriers to integrating biodiversity risk assessment: limited access to reliable data, lack of robust models and insufficient future scenarios.
For digital construction, this highlights the importance of integrating biodiversity data into BIM workflows, site planning tools and digital twin models to enable evidence-based decisions.
Prof. Polasky notes: “Too often, businesses spend more time trying to decipher complex, competing frameworks for compliance and reporting than taking meaningful action.”
The report outlines three principles for selecting measurement methods:
- Coverage of geographic and operational impacts
- Accuracy in representing environmental effects
- Responsiveness to business-driven changes
Operational decisions require location-based data, while corporate and portfolio decisions can rely on macro-scale environmental models and life-cycle assessments. Digital construction platforms can support both through integrated environmental data modelling.
Indigenous knowledge and sustainable construction decision-making
A further finding is the underuse of Indigenous and local knowledge in business decision-making. Industrial expansion threatens large areas of Indigenous land globally, yet these communities remain custodians of biodiversity knowledge.
Prof. Ximena Rueda, Co-chair of the assessment, explains:“Data and knowledge are often siloed… Scientific literature is not written for businesses and a lack of translation and attention to the needs of business has slowed uptake of scientific findings.”
She adds: “Respectful collaboration resulting in the sharing and better use of data, scientific insights and Indigenous and local knowledge can translate into better management of business risk and opportunities.”
Infrastructure developers operating in sensitive areas increasingly face social licence challenges, making community collaboration and environmental stewardship central to project approval and success.
Practical actions
The assessment identifies actions businesses can implement immediately, especially where enabling regulatory and financial environments support change.
These include:
- Reducing construction waste and emissions across supply chains
- Improving material efficiency through digital construction planning
- Integrating biodiversity outcomes into ESG reporting
- Disclosing impacts and lobbying activities transparently
- Aligning procurement with nature-positive suppliers
The report also stresses that businesses alone cannot achieve transformation. Governments, financial institutions and civil society must align policy, regulation and incentives to support sustainable business models.
Prof. Polasky reinforces the point: “Better stewardship of biodiversity is central to managing risk across the whole of the economy… it’s not some distant environmental issue, but a core challenge now in every boardroom and cabinet-room.”
Global biodiversity goals shape future construction markets
The Business and Biodiversity Report directly supports delivery of the Global Biodiversity Framework, Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement, placing business transformation at the centre of global environmental targets.
Dr. David Obura, Chair of IPBES, states: “Businesses are at the centre of how our economies, and large parts of our society, depend on and impact nature.”
For the digital construction sector, biodiversity integration is becoming a determinant of investor confidence, regulatory approval and infrastructure resilience.
Dr. Luthando Dziba, Executive Secretary of IPBES, concludes: “Nature is everybody’s business and the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of biodiversity is central to business sustainability and success.”
Digital construction leaders integrating biodiversity safeguards, transparent reporting, and nature-positive investment will secure resilient assets, protect communities, and sustain economic performance across future infrastructure markets worldwide successfully.
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