Microbial Diversity: The Hidden Key to Nature-Positive Finance and Urban Development

BIOTA Inc. (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo; CEO: Kohei Ito) has published a perspective paper proposing the integration of 'microbial diversity'—long overlooked—into nature-positive finance and urban development as a new evaluation metric. The paper has been accepted and published in npj Biodiversity, an international academic journal in the field of biodiversity issued by Springer Nature.

The nature-positive movement, an international goal to halt biodiversity loss and shift toward recovery by 2030, is gaining attention. Corporations and financial institutions are urgently responding to the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), a framework for assessing and disclosing dependencies on natural capital to investors and society. This paper proposes a new business model and urban design approach that simultaneously achieves environmental regeneration and human well-being (public health)—goals previously unattainable under conventional nature-positive frameworks—by measuring microbial diversity and incorporating its value into natural capital accounting.

Background: What Traditional 'Biodiversity' Has Overlooked

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), adopted in 2022, calls for mobilizing $200 billion annually by 2030 to conserve biodiversity, driving growth in private investment related to nature. Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) provide economic compensation to entities contributing to the maintenance or restoration of ecosystem services and are a crucial mechanism for linking conservation to sustainable funding cycles. However, PES remains limited within the overall GBF framework. Moreover, current PES schemes and general biodiversity assessments are biased toward visible large organisms such as forests, fish, and birds, or specific indicator species.

Yet, invisible 'microbes' underpin all of Earth’s life-support systems—from carbon and nitrogen cycling, water purification, and soil fertility to human immune regulation. This paper raises an alarm about the neglect of microbial roles in biodiversity contexts, including PES, and argues that properly measuring and evaluating microbial diversity for inclusion in PES is essential for building more resilient and inclusive nature-positive outcomes.

Key Argument: The Value of Microbial Diversity for Cities and Business

The paper and accompanying explanatory materials discuss how integrating microbial diversity as a nature-positive indicator could generate tangible value (ecosystem services) in the following areas:

- Public Health and Immune Enhancement: Exposure to diverse natural microbiomes is believed to support human immune development and reduce risks of allergies and autoimmune diseases. Urban green infrastructure, as a 'source of microbes,' could become an active investment in public health. - Advanced Water Purification: Current water quality assessments rely on the presence or absence of specific indicator bacteria (e.g., E. coli). Monitoring based on microbial diversity could enable early detection of water quality anomalies, leading to more reliable safety assurance. - Ecosystem Stability and Carbon Sequestration: Diverse soil microbes drive decomposition and nitrogen cycling. Higher microbial diversity is associated with greater stability of ecosystem functions under stressors like drought or temperature changes, contributing to long-term carbon storage and improved agricultural productivity.

Technology Enabling the Visualization of the 'Invisible Ecosystem'

PES requires measurable, verifiable indicators to justify payments. Although microbes were previously considered 'difficult to measure,' advances in genomic analysis now enable their transformation into business metrics. This approach leverages BIOTA’s proprietary genomic technologies—'Shared ASV Analysis,' which predicts microbial transmission and sharedness in the environment, and 'Microbial Source Tracking,' which proves causal relationships between conservation activities and their impacts on water or soil quality. These tools accelerate a paradigm shift from conservative testing (e.g., 'Are pathogens absent?') to proactive monitoring (e.g., 'How diverse are the microbes present?'). Implementing microbial PES will require businesses and governments to recognize the value of measuring microbial diversity within natural capital and to build seamless mechanisms connecting biological capital with private funding.

The insights from this paper could form powerful frameworks—such as biodiversity credits—to mobilize private capital in nature-positive finance, where large-scale funding will be essential. Investing in the 'invisible ecosystem' of microbes represents one of the most comprehensive and effective investments in humanity’s foundational needs: water, food, and health.

Paper Information

- Title: Microbial diversity as the next frontier of payments for ecosystem services in nature-positive finance - Authors: Kohei Ito, Honami Ando & Hiroshi Honda - Journal: npj Biodiversity - DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44185-026-00136-7

Our Initiatives

BIOTA Inc. evaluates the health of microbial diversity in urban environments and designs urban spaces—including architecture, landscape, and material design—to enhance this diversity.

To accelerate the societal implementation of the 'microbial diversity' concept, we are actively seeking partner organizations in the following areas: environmental consultants, developers, creative agencies, and local governments.

- Urban Development and Office Greening: Joint demonstration projects for new spatial designs that enhance worker well-being through microbial diversity metrics, even in space-limited urban settings. - TNFD Compliance and Environmental Consulting: Co-developing innovative natural capital assessment and disclosure schemes using the 'Microbial Diversity Score' to differentiate from competitors.

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Contact Information

BIOTA Inc.

Address: THE LINKPILLAR1 NORTH 6F, LiSH, 2-21-1 Takanawa, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0074, Japan

Email: info[@]biota.ne.jp