Businesses Make the Case for Biodiversity at WSSD

by Nick Bertrand and Frank Vorhies

At the IUCN (World Conservation Union) Business Day, on August 31 in Johannesburg, businesses, banks, NGOs and intergovernmental organizations made the business case for biodiversity and sanctioned the triple bottom line message of people, planet, prosperity.

The IUCN convened more than 80 speakers to profile and discuss business and biodiversity initiatives from community-based operations to multinationals: BirdLife International, British American Tobacco, Earthwatch, Future Forests, General Motors, Green Globe 21, IIED, the International Finance Corporation, the International Labour Organization, Northumbrian Water, Pro-Natura, Rio Tinto, Shell, The Nature Conservancy, UNCTAD, UNEP, the World Bank Group, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, WWF and many others – (for a full list of speakers and background documents, visit http://biodiversityeconomics.org/wssd).

Speakers stressed the many advantages to integrating biodiversity into the core of business operations ­ including securing the license to operate, strengthening the supply chain, bolstering stakeholder relationships, appealing to ethical consumers, ensuring sustainable growth, attracting socially responsible investors, and improving employee productivity.

By integrating biodiversity into their business models, companies can attract the growing supply of socially responsible capital. For listed companies, there are now several indices drawing attention to a companys environmental performance. For example, the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes, developed by the Swiss-based Sustainable Asset Management, provides a performance ranking on sustainability for some of the worlds largest companies.

The two most important messages from this day are that business is increasingly taking its responsibility for the environment without impeding vital business processes ­- it often even increases the long-term profitability – and that the private sector and the conservation community can work together in sustainable development, summarised IUCN Director General Achim Steiner.

Participants reaffirmed that biodiversity is everyones’ business – all companies can contribute to biodiversity conservation. The business case for the 21st century is that businesses have to be legal, profitable and socially and environmentally responsible, said Tom Burke, Environmental Advisor, Rio Tinto.

The Vilanculos Coastal Wildlife Sanctuary – an integrated conservation and development initiative lead by a private company, Jordon Properties, in association with the Mozambique government, local community associations, the Global Environment Facility, the International Finance Corporation and IUCN – is committed to creating significant job opportunities for a very poor rural community. It is also partnering with tour operators around Vilanculos to promote best practices for biodiversity conservation.

Shells Group-wide Biodiversity Standard states that: We recognise the importance of biodiversity. We are committed to work with others to maintain ecosystems, to respect the basic concept of protected areas and to seek partnerships to enable the Group to make a positive contribution towards the conservation of global biodiversity. Shell companies will conduct environmental assessments, which include the potential impacts on biodiversity, prior to all new activities and significant modifications of existing ones; and bring focused attention to the management of activities in internationally recognized hotspots, including the identification of, and early consultation with, key stakeholders.

The major challenge lying ahead remains to shift biodiversity engagement from the current few businesses to the wider business community.

Throughout the day, partnerships were singled out as an essential tool to provide companies with access to biodiversity expertise, strengthen and legitimise biodiversity activities, allow companies to efficiently out-source unfamiliar activities, build company capacity which may be valuable in other areas of the business, and enable cultural change. Shell Chairman Philip Watts mentioned that We at Shell believe biodiversity is a core business issue. Our main challenge is to integrate it into our business processes consistently and globally. We see partnerships as a critical element in helping us achieve this aim.

Key to the design and delivery of Northumbrian Waters Biodiversity strategy has been the development of partnerships with local, regional and national conservation organisations. The company produced its own Biodiversity plan in 1996, having worked in the local Durham Biodiversity partnership to identify priority species and habitats hat might be impacted by the companys operations in the region, said Northumbrian Water Environment Director Chris Spray.

To build the capacity of employees to address biodiversity issues in the workplace, several companies have established partnerships with conservation NGOs focused on staff development. The mining company Rio Tinto, for example, has partnered with the Earthwatch Institute to support employees as conservation volunteers. In addition to building employee capacity by working with biodiversity issues in challenging environments, the programme encourages returning volunteers to act as conservation champions within the company.

A fundamental issue, however, is how to construct biodiversity partnerships that genuinely benefit all parties. The BIO+10 Partnerships Initiative, profiled during the Summit, is an illustration of ongoing efforts to assess the real value of cross-sector partnerships for biodiversity. “Getting Real,” a document commissioned by BIO+10 and presented during the Business Day, explores the challenges of sustaining biodiversity partnerships. The founding members are inviting other business and biodiversity organisations to become involved in BIO+10.

Also launched on August 31, “Business and Biodiversity: The Handbook for Corporate Action,” is a joint report produced by Earthwatch Institute (Europe), IUCN and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. It captures, to some extent, the spirit of the Business Day, by highlighting many pioneering examples from businesses taking action to conserve and enhance biodiversity.

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