In the era of global ecological crises, businesses have been challenged to re-think their value creation and their role in relation to biodiversity loss and degrading ecosystems. In particular, industries that are based on heavy natural resource extraction, such as mining, have been asked to start finding ways, with their stakeholders, to minimize biodiversity loss or even generate biodiversity. We build on stakeholder theory and examine business–stakeholder relationships and their dynamics to understand how and what kind of value the mining companies and their stakeholders can jointly create for biodiversity. Our inductive content analysis of 24 interviews reveals four interconnected categories of joint value creation activities that take place within business–stakeholder relationships and create value for biodiversity. These activities and the related biodiversity value are categorized as follows: (1) Regulatory biodiversity activities with Authority-driven conservation and restoration value, (2) Visionary R&D biodiversity activities with Expertise-driven transformative value, (3) Emergent, bottom-up biodiversity activities with Community-driven regenerative value, and (4) Communicative biodiversity activities with Business–stakeholder-driven social value. This study builds a bridge between stakeholder theory and biodiversity by expanding knowledge on business–stakeholder relationships and their dynamics in addressing biodiversity. In particular, the study shifts the focus from minimizing harm to identifying novel joint value creation opportunities to enhance surrounding socioecological systems through companies’ biodiversity activities by utilizing local specifics and knowhow.
