How companies can align nature investments with water risk and operational resilience for long-term value creation.
Nature and water-related risks are no longer fringe sustainability concerns. They are increasingly material business issues with direct implications for operational continuity, supply chain resilience, regulatory compliance, and long-term enterprise value. Whether it is water scarcity affecting production, extreme weather disrupting supply chains, declining water quality increasing treatment costs, or ecosystem degradation reducing the resilience of landscapes that businesses depend upon, organizations are facing growing pressure to understand how nature-related risks translate into financial and operational consequences.
At the same time, the conversation around nature-based solutions (NBS) is evolving. What was once viewed primarily through the lens of corporate responsibility is being recognized as a strategic business issue. Recent analysis from the World Economic Forum highlights more than 50 investable opportunities across multiple sectors that generate both environmental and economic returns. As a result, corporate interest in NBS has accelerated. Companies are exploring watershed restoration, wetland rehabilitation, regenerative agriculture, groundwater recharge initiatives, riparian restoration, and other landscape-scale interventions as tools for managing risk while contributing to broader environmental outcomes.
Yet while interest in nature-based solutions continues to grow, many organizations face a common challenge -determining which NBS investments will create meaningful value for their business.
A watershed restoration project may deliver significant ecological benefits, but if it is disconnected from a company’s priority geographies, operational dependencies, or supply chain risks, its contribution to business resilience may be limited. Conversely, a targeted intervention within a strategically important basin may generate measurable improvements in water security, operational continuity, stakeholder relationships, and long-term resilience. The companies generating the greatest value from nature-based solutions are not simply investing in nature. They are investing in the right interventions, in the right places, to address the specific risks and dependencies that matter most to their business.
Nature-based solutions are increasingly being adopted as a tool for managing water and nature-related risks. However, there is a common misconception that investments in nature will generate similar outcomes. In practice, the effectiveness of NBS depends almost entirely on how the contextual challenges of the watershed as well as how well the solution aligns with a company’s specific risks, dependencies, and operating context.
Research from PwC demonstrates that nature dependencies exist across virtually every sector of the economy. While industries such as agriculture, forestry, and food production have obvious dependencies on healthy ecosystems, other sectors including manufacturing, mining, retail, finance, healthcare, and technology also rely on ecosystem services throughout their value chains.
The challenge is that these dependencies do not manifest in the same way.
A food and beverage company sourcing agricultural commodities from water-stressed regions may prioritize regenerative agriculture, soil health improvements, and watershed restoration to improve water availability and strengthen supply chain resilience. A manufacturer facing increasing treatment costs may focus on interventions that improve upstream water quality through riparian restoration, wetland enhancement, or nutrient reduction programs. A retailer seeking to address nature-related impacts within its value chain may require a completely different set of interventions focused on supplier engagement and landscape stewardship.
Each of these approaches falls under the umbrella of nature-based solutions. However, they address different risks, operate at different scales, and produce different outcomes.
Walmart’s collaboration with The Nature Conservancy has focused on initiatives that are tailored to specific business and environmental challenges across its value chain, including sustainable fisheries in the Pacific, mangrove restoration and emissions reductions within shrimp supply chains, water quality improvements in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and more sustainable agricultural production systems. While each initiative delivers environmental benefits, they are also linked to business priorities such as supply chain resilience, resource stewardship, product sourcing, and long-term operational sustainability.
This is why understanding a company’s dependencies and impacts on nature is such a critical starting point. Before selecting an intervention, organizations should first understand where they rely on ecosystem services, where their activities contribute to environmental pressures, and which locations are most material to long-term business performance. Frameworks such as the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) and the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN) encourage this type of prioritization. Rather than treating nature as a single issue, they help organizations identify the locations, ecosystems, and environmental factors that matter most to their business and stakeholders.
The most successful corporate nature programs therefore do not begin with a project. They begin with a clear understanding of risk, dependency, impact, and opportunity. This distinction may seem subtle, but it is often the difference between an NBS investment that creates measurable business value and one that struggles to demonstrate relevance beyond good intentions.
Growing interest in nature-based solutions has not translated to widespread implementation at scale. Recent research examining private-sector contractors and consultants involved in nature-based solution delivery identified several recurring barriers to scaling these approaches. These included limited technical expertise, difficulties recruiting and retaining skilled professionals, insufficient evidence of effectiveness, fragmented governance structures, funding constraints, and a continued preference for traditional grey infrastructure solutions.
These findings highlight that nature-based solutions are not simply environmental projects. They are complex interventions requiring ecological expertise, stakeholder engagement, governance structures, monitoring systems, and long-term adaptive management. Many sustainability teams understand that nature-related risks are becoming more material for business performance. They recognize the value of investing in nature and increasingly face pressure to demonstrate action. Yet many organizations lack the in-house expertise needed to determine which interventions are most likely to reduce risk or deliver meaningful environmental outcomes.
As a result, companies often find themselves navigating an increasingly crowded marketplace of conservation organizations, NGOs, watershed partnerships, consultants, restoration practitioners, and community groups without a clear framework for evaluating which partners can best support their objectives. The ambition is there, but the challenges are a lack of confidence in identifying the right intervention, the right geography, and the right implementation partner. This creates a significant risk and confusion as organizations may invest in projects that generate positive narratives and visible activity yet struggle to demonstrate measurable reductions or contributions to broader business objectives.
Selecting an implementation partner should be viewed as a strategic decision rather than a procurement exercise. Matching corporate needs to the right nature-based solution provider begins with understanding the company’s own risk profile. Knowing where to focus is often just as important as knowing what action to take. Once priorities have been identified, organizations can begin evaluating potential implementation partners through a more strategic lens:
Increasingly, organizations are recognizing that effective nature-based solutions require expertise that extends well beyond ecological restoration alone. Delivering meaningful outcomes often requires a combined understanding of hydrology, ecology, governance, community engagement, economics, monitoring, and corporate sustainability objectives. The most effective solutions are rarely delivered by a single organization acting alone. Instead, they are built through partnerships that bring together businesses, local communities, governments, watershed organizations, and experts around common objectives. Organizations that seek implementation partners capable of facilitating collective action are often best positioned for long-term outcomes.
Instead, they are built through multidisciplinary partnerships capable of translating watershed-scale challenges into practical interventions that generate measurable outcomes for both ecosystems and stakeholders. As nature-based solutions become more visibly linked to business resilience and risk management objectives, the ability to bridge science, implementation, and corporate decision-making is becoming an increasingly important success factor.
Nature-based solutions have enormous potential to improve water security, strengthen supply chains, enhance biodiversity, and increase resilience in the face of a changing climate. However, realizing those benefits requires more than simply investing in nature. It requires strategic alignment between business objectives, environmental priorities, and implementation capacity. Nature investments that are not linked to operational dependencies, watershed priorities, or measurable outcomes may still generate environmental benefits. However, they are less likely to deliver resilience and risk reduction.
Nature investments alone are no longer enough. The challenge is investing in the right interventions, in the right places, with the right partners.
About the Author
Matthew Paper is a freshwater ecologist and sustainability consultant specializing in water stewardship, biodiversity, and nature-related risk. As the Water and Nature Lead at Fresh Coast Climate Solutions, he works with organizations to better understand how water and nature influence business resilience, supply chain performance, and long-term value creation.
His work focuses on helping companies move from environmental ambition to practical action through risk assessment, strategy development, and the design of credible, outcome-focused nature and water programs.
