Biodiversity means business: Reframing global biodiversity goals for the private sector

Abstract

The Convention on Biological Diversity strategic goals direct the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity from global to local scales. Yet business’ role in meeting the strategic goals and being accountable for their impacts and dependencies on biodiversity are still not fully and coherently outlined. We demonstrate how business actions can contribute to the strategic goals using 10 publicly available case studies, covering businesses of various sizes, from multiple sectors, operating in different contexts. The case studies show some businesses already contribute to meeting biodiversity goals, often without realizing. We consider the drivers of business engagement with biodiversity; problems in interpreting the scale of impacts through corporate reporting; the implications for changing the way businesses engage with biodiversity goals; and how businesses could contribute more under the post‐2020 framework for biodiversity. We call for increased business accountability for nature and that all in conservation—policymakers, practitioners, researchers, communities—do more to connect businesses with the strategic goals. Clearer business roles and responsibilities within international targets form a critical step toward the fundamental systems‐level change required to reverse biodiversity loss.

Bringing sustainability to life: A framework to guide biodiversity indicator development for business performance management

“…Some conservation tools are particularly useful in helping to set goals and targets, including theory of change process modelling (CI, 2013), objectives hierarchies and the mean-ends diagrams used in structured decision-making(Gregory et al, 2012; Table 1).Often biodiversity goals and targets will respond to site-level regulatory or financial lender requirements (e.g., InternationalFinance Corporation Performance Standard 6-to achieve net gain for critical habitats; IFC, 2012). They may also align with international biodiversity goals, like those included in the SDGs (e.g., reduce impacts, improve biodiversity status through protection and restoration, enhance benefits to society, support and engage in biodiversity knowledge-sharing;Smith et al, 2020). Such goals and targets should be specific to the business's influence and impacts,Doran, 1981), such as Walmart's commitment to 'To conserve one acre of wildlife habitat for every acre of land occupied by Walmart U.S. through 2015' and Hewlett Packard's aim 'to achieve zero deforestation associated with HP brand paper and paper-based product packaging by 2020' (see summary inAddison, Bull, & Milner-Gulland, 2018).…”

What makes businesses commit to nature conservation?

“…It is also important that companies are enabled to contribute to conservation goals in a meaningful way. To ensure this, they would need to be better involved in the design and implementation of global biodiversity frameworks, as highlighted by Barbier et al (2018) and Smith et al (2019). International strategic agreements, especially a post‐2020 global biodiversity framework, could formally integrate companies and set clear responsibilities for conservation targets, expressed in a language of opportunity and risk that businesses can understand (ibid.).…”

“…Despite these developments and existing examples of corporate biodiversity engagement, we are still on the fast track to losing biodiversity due to, among others, a significant lack of available funding and wider business support (Barbier, Burgess, & Dean, 2018; Smith et al, 2019). To underline this deficit, about half of the largest 100 corporations worldwide were found to mention biodiversity in their reports and about a third had clear biodiversity commitments, but only five presented specific, measurable and time bound goals (Addison, Bull, & Milner‐Gulland, 2018).…”

Coupling property rights with responsibilities to improve conservation outcomes across land and seascapes

“…More recently, the United Nations Environmental Programme Finance Initiatives Principles for Responsible Banking will seek to hold lending institutions generally to account through analysis of their environmental impact, target setting and reporting (UNEP, 2019). Certainly, ascribing responsibilities beyond the rights-holder is an important consideration that requires more attention (e.g., Addison et al 2020;Nash et al, 2020;Smith et al, 2020).…”