Building biodiversity leadership across the Tata Group

The Biodiversity Consultancy (TBC) partnered with the Tata Sustainability Group to build biodiversity capability across one of India's largest business groups starting with a single workshop, and growing into a leadership-wide capacity-building programme.

TBC first delivered a biodiversity training workshop for senior sustainability and ESG professionals from across Tata companies, including Tata Steel, Tata Motors, Tata Chemicals, Tata Consumer Products (Tea and Coffee), and the Taj Hotels Group. The goal was to help participants understand emerging biodiversity risks, opportunities and expectations, and give them practical knowledge to embed nature into business decision-making.

The workshop's impact was immediate and clear. It demonstrated just how relevant and urgent biodiversity had become across the Tata Group and pointed to an obvious next step. Tata Steel wanted to take this further, and engaged TBC to bring biodiversity training directly to its C-suite and senior executives across finance, manufacturing, supply chain, operations and corporate strategy.

Our approach

TBC delivered in-person biodiversity training at Tata Steel's headquarters in Kolkata, India, for around 100 senior leaders including Presidents, Vice Presidents, CEOs and other executive decision-makers. The training ran as a full day across two half-day sessions, and was built around two goals – building leadership capability, and strengthening organisational readiness to act on biodiversity.

The programme covered the essentials about the drivers of biodiversity loss, global policy and reporting frameworks, the mitigation hierarchy, and pathways towards Net Positive Impact and Nature Positive outcomes, before moving into something more hands-on. In interactive strategy sessions, leaders explored Tata Steel's own biodiversity impacts, dependencies, risks and opportunities, and worked collaboratively to strengthen an initial strategic framework as the foundation for a company-wide approach.

Outcomes

The workshops significantly increased biodiversity awareness among Tata Steel's senior leadership, creating a shared foundation for decision-making across the business. By bringing together executives from finance, operations, manufacturing and supply chain, the programme built genuine cross-functional alignment around the company's biodiversity ambitions and strengthened leadership ownership of its No Net Loss commitment.

The sessions also surfaced valuable insights into Tata Steel's biodiversity impacts and opportunities, helping shape the early direction of its biodiversity strategy. Leaders left with the confidence to champion biodiversity action in their own areas of responsibility, and to integrate nature into strategic planning, operational decisions and long-term business performance.