The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has introduced a new standard, ISO 17298: Biodiversity for Organizations, designed to help organizations assess and manage their biodiversity impacts, dependencies, risks, and opportunities.

The launch comes as businesses face growing regulatory, reputational, and operational pressures linked to biodiversity loss—with more than $44 trillion, or over half of global GDP, moderately or highly dependent on nature. Despite rising expectations for companies to integrate biodiversity considerations into their strategies, the absence of a unified framework has led to fragmented efforts and confusion. According to Noelia Garcia Nebra, ISO’s Head of Sustainability and Partnerships, the new standard aims to close this gap by providing “a structured roadmap” for assessing biodiversity-related impacts and embedding them into corporate strategies.

ISO 17298 guides organizations in evaluating how their operations affect biodiversity, identifying priorities at operational and landscape levels, setting measurable goals, tracking progress, and aligning biodiversity management with overall sustainability strategies.

Developed by a technical committee comprising experts from more than 60 countries, the standard also involves the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) as a liaison organization. ISO emphasized that the standard is interoperable with major frameworks such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), ISO 14001 (Environmental Management Systems), and ISO 26000 (Social Responsibility), while contributing directly to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

This release represents the first in a planned series of biodiversity-related standards. ISO’s upcoming work will focus on areas including biodiversity vocabulary, net gain approaches, and product characterization based on native species.

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