Azra Nurkic is the CEO and cofounder of the Institute for Development Impact.
Corporate ESG initiatives are shifting focus. Whereas the sustainability benchmarks of yesteryear simply involved minimizing harm to the environment, many companies today have ambitions beyond that, toward creating net-positive impacts. Back in 2021, the Harvard Business Review published “The Net Positive Manifesto,” exhorting corporate titans to consider that “becoming net positive is a natural step—even an inevitable one.” (The authors published a best-selling book on the same topic later that year.) Since then, a net-positive movement has taken off, with more and more companies making regenerative impacts, as opposed to merely mitigation, their goal.
While carbon offsetting has long been a sustainability staple, it often falls short of delivering lasting impact. Regenerative practices offer a more holistic solution by embedding environmental restoration directly into business models. As companies embrace this shift, they move beyond offsetting, toward strategies that actively enrich natural systems rather than just reducing emissions.
Many regenerative business models involve carbon insetting, a practice that reduces or offsets emissions directly within a company’s supply chain—a more integrated and proactive approach than traditional offsetting.
Some common examples of regenerative business models include:
1. Agriculture-Based Models
These programs, including agroforestry and eco-farming, involve integrating trees, crops and livestock systems; the goals include restoring soil health and biodiversity as well as improving the ecosystem through water management, carbon sequestration, cover cropping and crop rotation. Companies can source products from farms that adhere to these practices, ensuring a net-positive supply chain. These programs also tend to be community-focused, benefiting local constituents financially as well as through improved nutrition and climate-change resilience.
2. Circular Economy Models
Circular regenerative business models turn waste into resources. These models extend product lifecycles by prioritizing reuse, repair and recycling. This practice is most commonly seen in the fashion industry, but has recently begun showing up in electronics and household goods companies, where closed-loop production processes, use of recycled materials and minimizing waste throughout the product lifecycle are all imperatives. Extended producer responsibility (EPR) is a component of the circular economy, wherein companies are held responsible for all estimated costs within a product lifecycle, thus promoting biodegradable packaging and more efficient warehousing and transport practices.
3. Purpose-Driven Models
These companies operate according to a mission that goes beyond profit-making, though many of them leverage net-positive practices for financial gain. In all cases, they take a mission-first approach, focused on the “triple bottom line” of planet, people and profit, and rely on stakeholder engagement to reinforce value and trust. Certified B Corps and nonprofits may fall into this category.
However, moving beyond traditional sustainability metrics requires rethinking how success is measured. Impact assessments that capture the full spectrum of a company’s contributions to ecosystems and communities are essential. Forward-thinking businesses must create new evaluation frameworks that prioritize regenerative outcomes. This approach not only builds trust with stakeholders but also sets a new standard for what it means to be sustainable, in which regeneration is prioritized over offsetting.
Government and enterprise must also come together to create, enact and enforce policies that support the adoption of net-positive business practices. This will involve governments making tough choices, particularly in addressing consumption challenges; it will also likely require financial commitments to spur transformation to more sustainable initiatives. However, this is preferable to the alternative of incremental, non-impactful steps that may be intermittently crowd-pleasing but in the long term leave the planet vulnerable to climate change and broad environmental degradation.
However difficult it may be, achieving net-positive impact demands a shift in mindset—one where regenerative practices are embedded into core business strategies. As stakeholders demand more rigorous sustainability goals—and that these goals are actually attained—business strategy alone will dictate a shift toward regenerative business solutions.
As we adapt to the challenges of climate change, businesses that are agile and resilient will find success by working within their environments, as opposed to against them—and in doing so, contributing meaningfully to environmental improvement and social prosperity.
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