From carbon-neutral to nature-positive higher education institutions

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are organizations that have a high societal impact, including through the production of new knowledge and the education of future experts. To influence the society and the HEI community, HEIs must lead by example. HEIs have the potential to implement key aspects of sustainability, view their campuses as living laboratories for tackling sustainability challenges and take a leading role in halting climate change and biodiversity loss (Littledyke et al., 2013; Valls-Val and Bovea, 2021; Yerokhin et al., 2024; Žalėnienė and Pereira, 2021).

Although HEIs play a key role in driving sustainability locally and globally, they are also part of the problem, substantially contributing to both consumption and emissions globally (Leal Filho et al., 2023). Universities’ negative impacts on nature can be demonstrated by calculating their carbon and biodiversity footprints (Bull et al., 2022; El Geneidy et al., 2025; Vainio et al., 2024b). Consumption-based biodiversity footprint assessments show that universities’ biodiversity impacts are not limited to their campuses but are largely outsourced through the international value chains of the products and services. HEI procurement, travel, energy and construction cause negative impacts on nature that are distributed around the globe.

Reducing and offsetting the HEI’s carbon and biodiversity footprints should not be considered solely an environmental question for universities. It is also a question of their ethical, global and social responsibility. Wealthier economies tend to cause more biodiversity loss (Obura et al., 2023), which is ultimately caused by their consumption patterns (Marques et al., 2019). In turn, larger and wealthier HEIs spend more on academic travel and procurement, which leads to an increase in their global carbon and biodiversity footprints, disproportionately affecting countries that are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change and biodiversity loss.

Human well-being and the economy are dependent on biodiversity, but still we have not been able to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. Human actions threaten an increasing number of species with global extinction (Dasgupta, 2021; IPBES et al., 2019). In April 2002, the governments that signed the convention on biological diversity (CBD) committed themselves “to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth”, but the target was not met (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2010). In turn, the Aichi Targets were supposed to address the crisis of biodiversity loss by 2020, but none of them were met (Xu et al., 2021). The 5th Global Biodiversity Outlook Report (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2020) reported significantly worsening trends, especially in targets relating to the drivers of biodiversity loss and to the current state of biodiversity itself. Now humanity is trying again with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) that includes four goals for 2050 and 23 targets for 2030, aiming to halt biodiversity loss and restore nature (CBD, 2022).

Biodiversity loss has five main drivers. Out of the five drivers, only climate change is commonly assessed and discussed at an organizational level. The other major drivers of biodiversity loss are land and sea use change, direct exploitation of organisms, pollution and invasive alien species (IPBES et al., 2019). Carbon neutrality goals and associated carbon footprinting can be beneficial for addressing climate change. However, from the perspective of biodiversity such assessments are too narrow (Bull et al., 2025). Novel methods such as BIOVALENT (El Geneidy et al., 2025), ReCiPe (Huijbregts et al., 2017) and GLOBIO (Alkemade et al., 2009) can be used to measure HEI’s biodiversity impacts. Some HEIs have piloted the methods to build an understanding of their global biodiversity footprints (Bull et al., 2022; El Geneidy et al., 2021; Vainio et al., 2024b; Vainio and El Geneidy, 2021). However, there is not yet enough data for the methods to incorporate all the drivers of biodiversity loss and all the various facets of biodiversity (Damiani et al., 2023; Marques et al., 2021).

The term nature positive represents an increase in ambition from terms such as carbon neutrality, net zero or no net loss. Even though nature positive is a global societal goal, it is used by organizations to describe their goal to transform their operations – and supply chains – to halt and reverse nature loss visibly and measurably by 2030 (Booth et al., 2024; White et al., 2024). Principles for nature-positive commitments include the integration of climate change and social justice, extended accountability for biodiversity impacts including those driven by value chain activities and sector-wide efforts (such as the HEI sector), working together toward a common goal (Booth et al., 2024).

The Nature Positive Universities Network, launched by UNEP and the University of Oxford in 2022 at CBD COP15 in Montreal, aims to translate nature-positive goals into HEI-level action. The network brings together HEIs, calls for them to make the nature-positive pledge, a senior-level commitment to incorporate a biodiversity baseline, targets, actions and to report their progress annually (NPU, 2025). By June 6, 2025, a total of 162 universities from 103 countries had made the pledge (NPU, 2025). In comparison, at the Times Higher Education Climate Impact Forum in 2021, it was announced that 1,050 universities and colleges had pledged to halve their emissions by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050. Evidently, carbon neutrality pledges are much more common than nature-related pledges. However, carbon footprint calculations carried out by HEIs still lack standardized frameworks and often exclude emissions that occur in the value chain (so-called Scope 3 emissions). In many cases, value chain emissions represent a large proportion of the total carbon footprint of HEIs (Ahonen et al., 2024; Alvarez et al., 2014; Larsen et al., 2013; Ozawa-Meida et al., 2013; Sangwan et al., 2018; Valls-Val and Bovea, 2021).

Making a carbon neutrality or a nature-positive pledge means universities should set targets, commit to them, design and implement action plans, measure, monitor and report their progress (NPU, 2025). Despite this, HEIs often make pledges without specific, measurable, assignable, realistic and Time-bound, that is, SMART, target setting (Doran, 1981). Furthermore, HEIs should set a baseline based on the current state of biodiversity impacts of their operations (Ahonen et al., 2024; Barron et al., 2021; White et al., 2024). What is more, positive actions undertaken by individual organizations may not lead to positive outcomes at a society scale if displacement and leakage of pressures are not accounted for (Moilanen and Kotiaho, 2018; White et al., 2024). Universities have an opportunity – and responsibility – to lead the way in efforts to achieve nature-positive goals. Indeed, Barron et al. (2021) argue that HEIs can refocus climate change mitigation efforts toward actions that will help shift policy and markets at larger scales. We argue that HEIs can similarly lead the way with halting biodiversity loss in society.

The Aichi targets failed in part because they were not SMART, that is, they weren’t measurable and lacked clear indicators (Bridgewater, 2011; Green et al., 2019). Nature-positive goals and targets should be structured in a way that facilitates translation into actionable policies that can be successfully implemented (Green et al., 2019). This paper addresses the conceptual ambiguity surrounding organizational sustainability claims by asking: What does it mean for a higher education institution (HEI) to be carbon neutral or nature positive? We explore this question through an action research approach, drawing on two workshops conducted with Finnish sustainability experts. Insights emerging from the workshops were analyzed and subsequently synthesized with existing literature to identify the essential components of credible carbon neutrality and nature-positive claims. Building on the findings, the paper proposes a more precise conceptualization of a Nature Positive University and contributes to strengthening the theoretical and operational foundations of these emerging sustainability concepts.

Booth et al. (2024) called on forward-thinking organizations to pilot their framework for designing and prioritizing targets and actions toward transformative change. Each HEI is different and must set its own context-specific targets and actions, but target-setting for the HEI sector should be a collective effort. Clear definitions for carbon-neutral and nature-positive universities are needed. Even though HEIs have already made nature-positive pledges, it is often not at all, poorly, or inconsistently defined (White et al., 2024).

We use Finnish HEIs as a case study, continuing the work of Ahonen et al. (2024) who investigated the collective and individual efforts undertaken by Finnish HEIs to monitor, mitigate and offset their carbon footprints. Ahonen et al. (2024) undertook a survey targeting sustainability experts across all 38 Finnish HEIs and used a SWOT analysis (Helms and Nixon, 2010) to draft a series of policy recommendations. Ahonen et al. (2024) also identified the emission categories Finnish HEIs currently include in their carbon footprint assessments. The same emission categories are used in this paper. The categories are in line with the greenhouse gas (GHG) protocol (“Standards and Guidance, 2026), a widely used international supplier of GHG accounting standards and guidance including a Scope 3 standard.

Without a standard outlining which emission categories should be included in carbon and biodiversity footprints, it becomes impossible to compare footprints and measure progress toward the goals in HEIs and in society at large. The actions and resources required for reaching a carbon neutrality goal depend heavily on the emission categories included in the footprint calculations. Scope 3 emissions are the emissions created in the organization’s value chain (except energy production, which is Scope 2) and represent the largest proportion of HEIs’ carbon footprints, which, in many cases, is also a significant component of the biodiversity footprint (Alvarez et al., 2014; Bull et al., 2022; Larsen et al., 2013; Ozawa-Meida et al., 2013; Sangwan et al., 2018; Valls-Val and Bovea, 2021).

Most HEIs include some Scope 3 emissions categories in their carbon footprint assessments, but not all (Fuchs et al., 2024; Valls-Val and Bovea, 2021). In Finland, 71% of the 36 HEIs (14 universities and 24 universities of applied sciences) have set a carbon neutrality target. Despite the ambitious goals of Finnish HEIs, no consensus exists on which Scope 3 emission categories should be included when claiming carbon neutrality (Ahonen et al., 2024). According to Ahonen et al. (2024), 68% of Finnish sustainability experts would exclude commuting, 48% would exclude investments, and 39% would exclude student exchanges. Only 26% of the HEIs stated that all the categories presented fall under the offsetting responsibilities of HEIs (Ahonen et al., 2024). A clear understanding and interpretation of the carbon neutrality goal is needed at the HEI level, both in Finland and at a global scale.

Sustainability experts of the Finnish HEIs have since continued the discussion on carbon neutrality claims and the broader nature-positive goal. Three Finnish HEIs (Universities of Helsinki, Jyväskylä and Turku) have signed the nature-positive pledge and four more have become members of the Nature Positive Universities network (University of Oulu, Tampere University, Häme University of Applied Sciences and Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology). Given the increasing interest in nature-positive commitments, there is a need to consider how HEIs could align themselves with the global nature-positive goal and what should be used as an indicator for an organization’s nature-positive targets. Using the CO₂ equivalent of carbon footprint alone as a metric for HEIs’ sustainability strategies will not accurately capture the extensive impacts that an HEI may have on climate and biodiversity. Focusing on measuring and reducing climate impacts alone can lead to adverse effects for biodiversity. For example, it has been shown that the transition to biofuels that are often classified as “green” renewable fuels has significant impacts on biodiversity (Gasparatos et al., 2017; Rehbein et al., 2020; Santangeli et al., 2016b, 2016a; Vainio et al., 2024a). So far, two Finnish universities (Turku and Jyväskylä) have assessed their biodiversity footprints to set the baseline and to quantify their progress toward nature-positive commitments. They used the BIOVALENT method that uses biodiversity equivalent as an indicator (El Geneidy et al., 2025; Vainio et al., 2024b). Other commonly used indicators for organization’s biodiversity footprints include loss in mean species abundance (Alkemade et al., 2009) and potentially disappeared fraction of species (Huijbregts et al., 2017) that was used by the University of Oxford in their biodiversity footprint analysis (Bull et al., 2022).

Two workshops were carried out within the Finnish Association of Research Managers and Administrators (Finn-ARMA), an open platform for sustainability networking and cooperation in Finland. Finn-ARMA has established a working group for sustainable development and responsibility and a carbon neutrality and nature-positive sub-group that is open for all Finnish HEIs. The goal of the workshops was to define the carbon neutrality goal of Finnish HEIs, particularly to clarify which Scope 3 emissions categories should be included, and to define a common goal or a commitment statement that would provide Finnish HEIs a base to start working toward nature positive.

Both workshops were organized in Tampere, Finland, with a title “Defining the concept of becoming a carbon neutral and Nature Positive higher education institute in Finland”. The first workshop was organized on September 13, 2024, and the second on February 14, 2025. The workshop methodology was developed by the authors following the key principles and characteristics of an action research method “democratic dialogue” (Gustavsen, 2001; Gustavsen and Engelstad, 1986; Kalliola et al., 2019, 2006). To clarify the action research approach, the authors structured the process following the five stages of action research: diagnosis, planning, intervention, observation and reflection (Susman and Evered, 1978; Thiollent, 2011). Diagnosis involved identifying conceptual ambiguities in HEIs’ carbon neutrality and nature-positive claims based on prior literature and Ahonen et al. (2024). Planning consisted of designing two workshops to explore these issues with Finnish sustainability experts. Intervention occurred during the workshops, where participants engaged in democratic dialogue to define Scope 3 boundaries and elements of nature-positive commitments. Observation involved documenting discussions and workshop outputs. Reflection was carried out by analyzing the workshop results and integrating them with literature, leading to recommendations on Scope 3 inclusion and a proposed definition of a Nature Positive University.

Before the workshops, the participants were asked to familiarize themselves with the GHG protocol (“Standards and Guidance, 2026), articles by Ahonen et al. (2024) and Booth et al. (2024) and the report on the University of Turku’s biodiversity footprint (Vainio et al., 2024b). The workshop was opened with introductions, followed by short presentations of the previous work done and explaining the goals of the workshop to the participants. The dialogue followed and conclusions were written down using Excel (1st workshop) and PowerPoint (2nd workshop). Both workshops were based on discussions and argumentation until a mutual understanding was reached. No voting took place. The workshop results (Excel sheet in the 1st workshop and PowerPoint slide in the 2nd workshop) were shared with all the participants and the Finn-ARMA sustainability group.

The participants of the workshops comprised personnel in charge of the environmental responsibilities of Finnish HEIs. Most HEIs sent one representative, but some sent two. One participant represented a university and a university of applied sciences. A total of 10 HEIs were represented in the first workshop and 11 in the second (see  Appendix for the complete list). Workshop participants therefore constituted over 50% of Finnish universities and 30% of Finland’s total number of HEIs.

The workshop results were further synthesized, illustrated (Figure 1 and Table 1) and complemented by the authors using findings from literature.

To prevent further biodiversity loss, urgent climate and biodiversity action is needed. Therefore, it is imperative that HEIs set their targets, strategies and action plans as soon as possible. An overarching nature-positive commitment was drafted at the 2nd workshop. Specific nature-positive targets for HEIs were also discussed, but they were not finalized for various reasons, including lack of consensus, need for further consultation with the university management and lack of baseline measurements. However, there was consensus of the overarching commitment. The proposed goal or commitment was “HEIs reduce their negative impact on climate and biodiversity, pursue a Nature Positive future, and contribute to the national and international climate and biodiversity targets.” This proposal demonstrates the Finnish HEIs’ environmental experts’ desire to achieve a net positive impact on biodiversity, as illustrated in Figure 1.

In simple terms, a carbon-neutral organization is one that reduces its carbon footprint as much as possible and then offsets the residual carbon footprint (Fankhauser et al., 2022). However, in practice, deciding the system boundaries of the organization’s carbon footprint and the carbon neutrality claim is not such a simple task. The boundaries might differ contextually depending on the ownership and control in the organizational structure, the size and nature of activities, involvement of the stakeholders and emission sources (Udas et al., 2018). The results of the workshop represent the reality of the Finnish HEIs, where setting system boundaries is contentious. Evidently, setting the boundaries inevitably includes some subjective decision-making.

A suggestion was made by one workshop participant to focus only on Scopes 1 and 2 of the carbon footprint, as Times Higher Education Impact Rankings currently report targets related to Scopes 1 and 2 only. The suggestion did not receive support from the other participants because Scope 3 emissions generally represent the main source of universities’ carbon and biodiversity footprint (Alvarez et al., 2014; Larsen et al., 2013; Ozawa-Meida et al., 2013; Valls-Val and Bovea, 2021).

Based on the workshop results, only a few categories were deemed to be excludable from the Finnish HEIs’ offsetting responsibility and associated carbon neutrality claims. A summary of the included and excluded categories and main points of workshop discussion and arguments used is presented in Table 1. The discussions also involved the possible biodiversity impacts of the emission categories.

Student commuting was the only category that remained unclear at the workshop. To clarify the responsibility of HEIs in addressing climate and biodiversity impacts, existing literature can provide guidance, although further research is also recommended. Valls-Val and Bovea (2021) carried out a systematic review of the carbon footprint assessment in universities. Their findings demonstrated the importance of including Scope 3 emissions in the universities’ carbon footprints, because carbon emissions from Scopes 2 and 3 make up the majority of the HEI sector’s total emissions. They used staff and student commuting as an example of emission sources that are often significant but not always included in carbon footprint assessments (Valls-Val and Bovea, 2021). Other literature also supports the inclusion of student commuting in HEIs’ carbon neutrality goal (Appleyard et al., 2018; Roknaldin et al., 2025).

We concur with the recent study by Barton et al. (2025) that universities in high-income economies should do more to accelerate the sustainability transition. HEIs should accept responsibility for their Scope 3 emissions and adjust their carbon neutrality claim to align with international standards (Barton et al., 2025). To fully quantify and address their negative impacts on climate, HEIs need to incorporate more emission categories or emission sources into their carbon footprint calculations, including investments and procurement. The analysis of inclusion and exclusion of categories should be done before setting the baseline, targets or the strategy on how to achieve carbon neutrality.

However, several HEIs have already set their climate targets and established an action plan, thus meaning that analyses must be carried out retrospectively and strategies updated. Since methodologies and data can be expected to continue improving, HEIs should form their strategies and set up the data collection in a way that allows updates when scientific understanding increases.

To show an example of a sustainable organization and take the leading role in the fight against climate change, as suggested by Valls-Val and Bovea (2021), HEIs must be cautious with their claims. For example, the assessment of the carbon footprint of the University of Jyväskylä showed that its largest emissions category was investments (El Geneidy et al., 2025, 2021), which traditionally has not been included in HEIs’ carbon footprint calculations (Valls-Val and Bovea, 2021).

Scopes 1 and 2 are the easiest and cheapest to calculate, so they are most commonly accounted for within carbon footprints alongside selected Scope 3 emissions (mainly commuting, waste, business trips, paper and water consumption) (Udas et al., 2018; Valls-Val and Bovea, 2021). Ahonen et al. (2024) warned about the temptation to cut corners in sustainability work just to be compliant and reach carbon neutrality. HEIs must be clear and transparent when communicating their pledges and monitoring their targets to avoid greenwashing. Universities should be meticulous with offsetting and provide separate goals and timescales for emissions reduction and carbon removal (McLaren et al., 2019).

Emission categories that may be left out of the carbon footprint and carbon neutrality claim could still be considered in HEI’s sustainability strategy. For example, even if the Finnish HEIs were to exclude the outsourced canteen services from their carbon footprints, HEIs should still work with the catering companies to reduce the emissions and influence consumption behavior. This could be viewed as the societal impact of the HEI, particularly considering that food production drives sizeable negative biodiversity impacts (Peura et al., 2023; Sherry and Tivona, 2022; Taylor et al., 2023).

Climate change is a major and increasing driver of biodiversity loss (Pigot et al., 2022). Thus, carbon emissions may form a substantial proportion of an organization’s biodiversity footprint. Mitigating the impacts of climate change is also one of the principles for nature-positive commitment (Booth et al., 2024; Pigot et al., 2022). Reducing the HEI’s carbon footprint may, therefore, represent a step on the path toward a nature-positive future. However, care must be taken to ensure that carbon footprint reduction strategies do not increase other drivers of biodiversity loss. For example, real estate maintenance and construction of university buildings can impact campus biodiversity. Another example is heating, which is particularly important in universities located in cold climatic conditions such as Finland. Vainio et al. (2024a,b) calculated the land use biodiversity impact of district heating. They found that shifting from carbon-intensive peat firing to wood firing to reduce the climate impact is likely to cause a significant increase in land use biodiversity impacts of district heating.

Most universities do not use any carbon footprint calculation tools, but rather perform their own assessments, making comparison of the results difficult (Valls-Val and Bovea, 2021). Standardized carbon footprint approaches should be applied despite the already proliferated methodologies and assessments. We should also establish standardized frameworks for biodiversity footprints, which have not been mainstreamed yet. HEIs should start calculating their biodiversity impacts using the same framework and metrics so that the results are comparable. However, at the same time, HEIs must acknowledge that biodiversity footprint calculations will never be perfect or encompass all biodiversity impacts since biodiversity cannot be measured or understood with one single indicator.

To align with the GBF goal of halting biodiversity loss by 2030, HEIs should set their organizational goals following the same timeline. However, more important than the 2030 target year is to set an organizational goal of net positive impact that contributes to the 2050 vision of GBF. We argue that the GBF global vision can also be understood as achieving the state of planetary well-being. “Planetary well-being is a state where the integrity of Earth system and ecosystem processes remains unimpaired to a degree that species and populations can persist to the future and organisms have the opportunity to achieve well-being” (JYU. Wisdom community et al., 2021). The concept of planetary well-being can also be operationalized in practice (Elo et al., 2023).

The use of the nature-positive concept as a branding tool has been criticized and researchers have warned not to dilute the term (Booth et al., 2024; Milner-Gulland, 2022). Individual organizations are suggested not to claim to be nature positive themselves but rather contribute to the global nature-positive goal, as actions and outcomes beyond the organization’s footprint are required to halt and reverse global nature loss (Booth et al., 2024; White et al., 2024). Although we agree with the need to contribute to global biodiversity goals, framing organizational targets solely as contributions to a global goal risk making them too vague and non-measurable. It is vital for an organization claiming such a contribution to have measurable indicators to prove that they themselves have a net positive impact on biodiversity. Without such a measurable impact, any claim about contributions is unverifiable and predisposes the organization to greenwashing.

Based on this argumentation, we propose the following definition of a Nature Positive University: “A Nature Positive University is a Higher Education Institution that has a measurable net positive impact on biodiversity and thereby contributes to the global Nature Positive goal of halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030 and achieving planetary well-being by 2050.”

This study is representative of HEIs in Finland. The results are broadly applicable to HEIs elsewhere, although findings of emission categories may differ according to geographical, cultural and policy contexts. HEIs should take care to assess their own emissions categories based on the findings of this paper and their own organizational structure. The definition of Nature Positive University can be adopted globally, even if the pursuit of the goal would follow different context-specific strategies. Also, all HEIs should accept responsibility for their Scope 3 emissions, and this, together with the nature-positive goal, should be acknowledged at the HEI sustainability rankings.

Two days of workshops were insufficient time to discuss, especially the unclear category, in more depth. The work should continue by exploring other possible emissions categories, agreeing on, and setting sector-specific SMART targets and indicators for the targets. We recommend HEIs from other countries with similar plans to reserve several days of workshops, and we emphasize that all the participants familiarize themselves with the materials and concepts presented before the workshops. Including researchers from the very beginning is also recommended to ensure that recommendations are robust and science-based.

It was agreed at the workshop that the proposal will later be finalized and presented to the Council of Rectors of Finnish Universities and to the Rectors’ Conference of Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences to secure the top management’s support before the proposal is sent to the Ministry of Education and Culture, the biggest financier of Finnish HEIs. The Ministry could support Finnish HEIs to refocus their climate and biodiversity efforts toward actions that will help shift policy, as suggested by Barron et al. (2021).

Avoided emissions or “handprint” (i.e. Scope 4) (Burek et al., 2022; Grönman et al., 2019; Guillaume et al., 2020; O’Keeffe and Brander, 2025) were not included in the workshops, or this paper but should be considered in the future. HEIs may be tempted to use avoided emissions to offset their value chain emissions, which could lead to confusing messaging with stakeholders or even greenwashing. Thus, if Scope 4 is included in reporting, a protocol must be followed and the whole scope measured and quantified accordingly.

Assessing HEIs’ biodiversity impact globally is not without uncertainties (Bromwich et al., 2025), but we must act with the best available data and knowledge. HEIs should set ambitious targets, network and cooperate with each other. What can appear highly ambitious for a single HEI today should become feasible if more HEIs and other organizations commit to ambitious nature-positive pathways (Taylor et al., 2023).

HEIs must find ways to measure not just their footprints, but their positive contributions to nature recovery to prove that they are able to counterbalance their negative biodiversity impacts. Restoring damaged ecosystems could be done on campus. However, from the universities’ biodiversity footprint assessments (Bull et al., 2022; El Geneidy et al., 2025; Vainio et al., 2024b), we know that most of the biodiversity impacts reside in value chains and take place globally. It is currently not possible to know which ecosystems have been harmed by the HEI’s consumption, so at the moment we cannot rely on traditional methods of biodiversity offsetting. Operational guidelines and means for offsetting HEIs’ unavoidable biodiversity impacts need to be developed urgently. There is a recent suggestion to develop global biodiversity offsetting to tackle the issue of outsourced biodiversity footprints of procurement (El Geneidy et al., 2025; Kalliolevo et al., 2025).

HEIs are increasingly aiming to be leaders in sustainability, setting the standard for sustainable organizations. To do so, they must be both ambitious and prudent in their claims, target-setting and actions. HEIs must recognize the negative impacts of their operations on nature and urgently set measurable targets to reduce and compensate the impacts. Put simply, it’s time for HEIs to practice what they teach.

Concepts like carbon neutral and nature positive must not be diluted to make them easier to reach. That would not contribute to halting biodiversity loss or climate change. Following the GHG protocol, Scope 3 should be included fully in the carbon footprint if HEI claims to be carbon neutral. University Sustainability Rankings should incorporate Scope 3 carbon emissions and biodiversity footprint to the rankings to accurately reflect HEIs’ progress toward carbon and biodiversity goals.

HEIs should aim at becoming not just carbon neutral, but sustainable organizations that have a positive net impact on biodiversity. To start, we proposed a new, more nuanced definition of a Nature Positive University that HEIs globally could embrace as an overarching goal:

Universities must accept the urgency of transformative change, making real contributions to solving the planetary crisis. We urge HEIs and sustainability leadership to recognize their role in driving climate change and biodiversity loss and increase their ambitions to become part of a wider shift toward climate neutrality and nature-positive-aligned goals.

The authors are grateful to Finn-ARMA sustainability working group and especially to Eeva-Liisa Viskari, chief specialist, sustainability and ESG, at Tampere University, for the practical organization of the workshops. The authors also thank Professor Hannu Heikkinen and the reviewers for their valuable suggestions and comments.