Risk Explanation 4: Biodiversity Loss & Ecosystem Collapse
WEF Global Risks Report 2026: Short-term Risk #26 | Long-term Risk #2
Welcome to the fourth deep-dive of our 2026 series. Throughout 2026, we explore a critical global risk identified in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2026; unpacking its scope, key insights, and potential takeaways for organisations navigating an increasingly complex world.
This time, we turn to a risk that sits just beneath extreme weather events in the long-term global outlook: Biodiversity Loss and Ecosystem Collapse. Ranked as the #2 most severe global risk over the next decade, it reflects a growing recognition that nature is not a backdrop to economic activity, but the foundation beneath it.
Below is an overview of what businesses and professionals should know about this risk, and we encourage you to check out more from the WEF Global Risks Report 2026 here: The Global Risks Report 2026 | World Economic Forum
What is the scope of this risk?
Biodiversity loss refers to the decline in the variety, abundance, and resilience of life across species, habitats, and ecosystems. Ecosystem collapse occurs when those natural systems become so degraded that they can no longer reliably perform the functions on which societies and economies depend.
This includes the weakening of forests, soils, wetlands, pollinator populations, freshwater systems, oceans, and other ecological networks that support food production, clean water, climate regulation, disease control, and raw material supply. The issue is not only that individual species are disappearing; it is that the systems connecting them are becoming less stable and less able to absorb shocks.
The scale of decline is significant. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services estimates that around one million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction, many within decades. It identifies five major direct drivers of biodiversity loss: changes in land and sea use, direct exploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution, and invasive alien species.
Fact File: Nature as a Long-Term Systemic Risk
The WEF’s 2026 report highlights a striking tension in how biodiversity risk is perceived. In the two-year outlook, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse has fallen to #26, reflecting a broader short-term “downward reprioritisation” of environmental risks as geopolitical and economic concerns dominate. The report also notes that, unlike the previous year, no stakeholder group ranked biodiversity loss among its top 10 short-term risks (Page 17, The Global Risks Report 2026).
Yet this short-term dip does not signal reduced danger. Looking toward 2036, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse retains its position as the #2 long-term global risk, behind only extreme weather events. The report further states that biodiversity loss shows the sharpest worsening in severity score from the two-year to the ten-year outlook of all risks surveyed. In other words, it is one of the risks most likely to be underestimated in the present while compounding steadily in the background.
This fits a broader environmental pattern. Over the next decade, the WEF finds that half of the top 10 global risks are environmental, and environmental risks are viewed with the greatest pessimism of any risk category, with close to three-quarters of respondents selecting either a turbulent or stormy outlook.
The economic implications are equally important. The World Economic Forum estimates that US$44 trillion of economic value generation, with over half of global GDP, is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services. These dependencies are visible across agriculture, food systems, construction, pharmaceuticals, tourism, manufacturing, water-intensive industries, and financial portfolios exposed to land, commodities, and infrastructure.
This is why biodiversity loss is increasingly understood not only as an environmental concern, but as a material business risk. The World Bank has warned that nature loss can affect economic stability directly, noting that a partial ecosystem collapse could result in severe national income losses in highly nature-dependent economies. (The Economic Case for Nature, World Bank Group)
Takeaway for Business: Understanding Your Organisation’s Dependencies on Nature
The 2026 report offers a useful prompt for organisations: where climate risk asks, “How will environmental disruption affect us?”, biodiversity risk also asks, “What natural systems does our organisation depend on to function in the first place?”
For some businesses, those dependencies are obvious: agricultural inputs, timber, water, fisheries, or land. For others, they are less visible but still material, embedded through supply chains, sourcing regions, energy systems, property assets, or the resilience of the communities in which they operate.
A practical starting point is to begin mapping:
Dependencies - the ecosystem services your operations and value chain rely on, such as water availability, soil quality, pollination, flood protection, or climate regulation.
Impacts - where your activities may contribute to habitat degradation, over-extraction, pollution, or land-use change.
Risks and opportunities - how nature loss could affect cost, continuity, regulation, reputation, market access, or long-term strategy.
This approach aligns closely with the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, which encourages organisations to assess and report on their nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities. (Framework for Integrated Decision-making – Capitals Coalition)
It also moves the conversation beyond “doing less harm” toward the more ambitious idea of becoming nature positive: contributing to the goal of halting and reversing nature loss by 2030, with continued recovery beyond that point.
For leadership teams, this means treating nature as a strategic consideration rather than a peripheral sustainability theme. Organisations that begin understanding their relationship with nature now will be better positioned to manage emerging risks, respond to stakeholder expectations, and design business models that are more resilient in a world where ecological stability can no longer be assumed.
At Colectivo, we help organisations reframe their relationship with nature and promote regenerative practices that engage people, as well as supporting planetary health..
#GlobalRisks2026 #Biodiversity #NaturePositive #ESGStrategy
