Tackling our planet’s dwindling biodiversity requires an approach that targets the problem holistically. As such, a new report written by a group of multidisciplinary scientists puts forward four key steps that all parts of society should take to help protect life on Earth.

The report, published in the journal One Earth, was written by researchers from 22 institutions and seeks to inform the upcoming UN Convention on Biological Diversity, where state leaders will convene to agree on a post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. The purpose of the Global Biodiversity Framework is to encourage government, business, and civil society to take the necessary actions for protecting our planet’s biodiversity.

The key steps put forward in the report are dubbed the “4Rs” and involve refraining from having a negative impact on nature as much as possible, reducing our harm on the environment when our impact cannot be avoided, restoring any damage we have already done, and finally, renewing the natural world by improving damaged ecosystems.

“We’re excited to launch this idea and hope that it will be useful to many different groups as they work to realize the vision of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework,” said lead author E.J. Milner-Gulland. “It’s a huge challenge, with many different facets, and we hope that Four Steps for the Earth will provide an intuitive and flexible framework for tying all the threads together.”