The phrase "Nature Positive" (NP) has travelled remarkably quickly from conservation advocacy into the center of global environmental policy. It now appears in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), G7 communiqués, and corporate commitments. Yet rapid uptake brings a familiar risk: conceptual ambiguity. NP could become a biodiversity scorecard or restoration slogan rather than what the science demands: a systemic programme to stabilize the biosphere.In their compelling Frontiers in Science lead article, Locke and colleagues provide an important conceptual recalibration for the NP framing (1). They anchor NP firmly in Earthsystem science and argue that halting and reversing biodiversity loss is inseparable from restoring planetary stability. This requires shifting from viewing the environment as a competing interest to recognizing it as the context for all human activity. Their synthesis clarifies priorities, identifies policy and financial gaps, and introduces the Three Conditions (3Cs) framework for organizing action across landscapes and seascapes.Building on this contribution, I want to amplify three of their messages that merit particular emphasis. First, NP should be explicitly multi-scale, reflecting processes that operate from local ecosystems to the biosphere. Second, effective action must extend beyond jurisdictional boundaries because many of the ecological processes that matter most routinely cross them.Third, the familiar "bending the curve" narrative (2), focused on protecting ecosystems and reducing drivers in combination, is not in tension with an Earth-system approach; it is the practical framing through which Earth-system transformation and a Nature Positive future can be achieved.Nearly a century ago, Vladimir Vernadsky described the biosphere as the thin envelope in which living matter exerts a "dominant geochemical role." He recognized that life and the Earth system are inseparable, an insight that now sits at the heart of planetary boundaries science (3). Locke and colleagues situate biodiversity loss alongside climate change as one of the two "core" planetary boundary transgressions and argue that achieving climate and development goals will be impossible without restoring biosphere integrity (4). This framing moves NP beyond species conservation into planetary regulation. The drying of the Amazon, the loss of coral reef systems, or disruptions to polar ice dynamics do not simply represent regional crises; they reflect disturbances to planetary feedbacks that regulate climate and biosphere function.Earth-system stability is therefore inherently multi-scale (5). Biodiversity emerged from ecoevolutionary processes operating across nested scales, including forests recycling moisture, plankton regulating productivity, migratory species linking ecosystems, and river basins channeling sediments and nutrients. Global stability emerges from the interaction of these regional processes across landscapes, biomes, and oceans.Policy discourse sometimes treats NP primarily as a global aggregate goal measured through headline indicators. Such metrics are essential for accountability but risk obscuring the processes that generate resilience locally and regionally. A multi-scale approach, linking sitelevel ecological condition, landscape connectivity, biome integrity, and planetary feedbacks, aligns more closely with the Earth-system framing articulated by Locke and colleagues.The Three Conditions Framework they advance is valuable because it recognizes spatial heterogeneity in human pressure and ecological function. The next phase of work should ensure that metrics and interventions within the 3Cs are explicitly nested across scales rather than treated as parallel categories.Beyond borders: the governance challenge Nature Positive must confront If Earth-system stability emerges across scales, many of the processes sustaining biodiversity do not follow political boundaries. As Locke and colleagues discuss, migration illustrates the challenge clearly. The persistence of migratory birds, marine megafauna, anadromous fish, and many terrestrial mammals depends on connected habitat networks spanning continents and oceans (6). Protection at breeding sites cannot compensate for mortality along migratory routes or loss of stopover habitats. Without coordinated monitoring, aligned policy, and cooperative finance, conservation outcomes will remain fragmented.The Earth system is integrated in ways governance systems often are not. National biodiversity strategies and action plans (NBSAPs) are indispensable for implementing the GBF. Yet they are structurally insufficient for conserving ecological processes that move across jurisdictions. NP cannot be achieved simply as the sum of national actions.The same logic applies to shared river basins and marine systems beyond national jurisdiction. Effective conservation requires governance mechanisms that match the spatial scales of the ecological processes involved. Strengthening transboundary cooperation through regional agreements, coordinated monitoring, and shared implementation frameworks could become a central component of GBF implementation. The Earth-system framing offered by Locke and colleagues provides a strong rationale for such cooperation. If biodiversity loss destabilizes coupled biophysical systems, governance responses must reflect comparable integration. The current early phase of GBF implementation offers an opportunity to embed these mechanisms before institutional path dependence sets in.Locke and colleagues argue that protecting intact ecosystems should be the top priority for achieving NP by 2030. Restoration and species recovery remain essential but are slower to deliver system-level benefits. This emphasis challenges restoration-heavy narratives such as large-scale tree planting or biodiversity offsets. Many ecosystem functions, including carbon storage, hydrological regulation, and complex species interactions, cannot be rapidly rebuilt once lost and may take decades to centuries to recover (7).For the scientific community, this message has two important implications. First, it reinforces the need for improved mapping and monitoring of ecosystem intactness. Second, it raises questions about how conservation finance and policy incentives are currently allocated. If protecting intact systems provides the highest return for Earth-system stability, then existing investment portfolios may require significant realignment.Earth-system framings can appear abstract relative to reducing pressures on biodiversity, but this is a false dichotomy. The widely cited "bending the curve" narrative (2), which focuses on scaling up protected area, reducing impacts of direct and indirect drivers, and transforming food system, is not inconsistent with an Earth-system perspective (8).Actions aimed at reducing habitat loss, curbing unsustainable harvest, reducing pollution, and restoring degraded systems interrupt cascading pressures that destabilize ecosystems across scales. When these pressures are reduced, ecological processes-from trophic regulation to hydrological cycles-can begin to recover.What is needed is tighter integration between threat-based metrics and indicators and Earthsystem indicators. Efforts to bend the curve by mainstreaming biodiversity knowledge across sectors of the economy must be linked to outcomes at biome and planetary scales. The scientific community can contribute by developing scenarios for biodiversity and nested, leading indicators that assess whether reductions in pressures are translating into improved ecological resilience across scales.Achieving NP will require a fundamental shift in how financial flows interact with the biosphere. Conservation finance should be evaluated against its contribution to maintaining intact systems and restoring Earth-system processes, not solely against area-based or species metrics. This means not only mobilizing new funding but redirecting existing investments away from activities that drive ecosystem degradation.Implementation of the GBF should incorporate stronger transboundary cooperation, particularly for migratory species, shared river basins, and lands and seas beyond national jurisdiction. Many of the ecological processes sustaining biodiversity operate across political boundaries. Coordinated international action and monitoring will therefore be essential to avoid spatially fragmented outcomes.Locke and colleagues also highlight the importance of working with Indigenous and local knowledge systems in managing landscapes and seascapes. Such knowledge, grounded in long-term relationships with place, provides critical insights into ecological variability and change. Supporting Indigenous and community stewardship is both a matter of equity and a practical strategy for sustaining ecological processes whose local management can have farreaching effects.Finally, there is an urgent need to harmonize reporting frameworks across multilateral environmental agreements addressing biodiversity, climate, and sustainable development.Initiatives such as the UNEP-facilitated Bern process illustrate how coordination among biodiversity conventions could reduce reporting burdens while improving policy coherence.Advances in biodiversity and Earth-system monitoring and workflows, integrating scientific, local, and Indigenous knowledge, will play a key role in enabling this alignment (9,10).Locke and colleagues provide an essential foundation for understanding NP as a systemslevel goal rooted in Earth-system science. Their emphasis on protecting intact ecosystems and integrating biodiversity within planetary stability offers a powerful reframing of the NP agenda and the conservation action mobilized to meet GBF targets and goals.The next phase of the NP agenda must focus on aligning scales of action with those of the Earth system. Interventions must operate across nested spatial domains, transcend jurisdictional fragmentation, and reduce the pressures that erode biosphere resilience. Only through such multiscale coherence can NP move from aspiration to Earth-system reality.AG declared that generative AI was used in the creation of this manuscript. The author used ChatGPT 5.2 to edit and shorten the penultimate draft.AG is employed as an associate by Habitat.AG received funding from Liber Ero Chair.Neither the funder nor the company was involved in this work's design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article, or the decision to submit it for publication.
Andrew Gonzalez (Thu,) studied this question.