Introduction

Amid mounting evidence that biodiversity is declining at dangerous and unprecedented rates around the world, calls for innovative responses to this crisis are growing. Action is required which needs to go beyond top-down and protected area management approaches to conservation, addressing both direct and indirect drivers of biodiversity loss. These range from habitat loss, overexploitation, climate change, pollution, and invasive species to social, cultural, political and economic factors.

Entrepreneurship is seen as a particularly promising driver of change. While it is well established in the economic and business literature that entrepreneurship is a major driver of economic transformation, it remains less clear how entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial mechanisms can expediate such a sustainability transformation that conserves biodiversity. Following recent calls for research and business activity to consider the diverse actors, values of nature, and strategies for sustainability, this PhD project aims to take a scholarly entrepreneurship perspective to investigate the nexus between conservation and entrepreneurship.