Embedding biodiversity and ecosystem services in corporate sustainability: A strategy to enable Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

The Sustainable Development Goals are a powerful lever to mainstream sustainability priorities in business' strategies and operations. At the same time, a new corporate sustainability based on a strategic understanding and management of biodiversity and ecosystem services is key to enact the new agenda for development. With the aim to better understand how businesses can operationalize the Agenda 2030, authors adopt a transdisciplinary approach and carry out an analysis of selected Italian business practices focused on biodiversity and ecosystem services management. Through a content analysis method and with the contribution of practitioners and experts, the main impacts of the practices have then been reconciled with the new framework for development. Finally, from primary data collected and further supported by semistructured interviews with company representatives (sustainability and environmental departments), authors propose a conceptual model that connects strategic biodiversity and ecosystem services management, its drivers and barriers, with the Sustainable Development Goals.

Integrating decision support tools into businesses for sustainable development: A paradoxical approach to address the food waste challenge

“…Through developing a more open and collaborative culture, based on, for example, user orientation, tacit knowledge and sustainability considerations, managing sustainability risks and opportunities becomes more optimal, thus effective (Hoffmann et al, 2007). Developing effective FLW‐reducing tools can also be achieved through the integration of sustainability assessment, benchmarking, monitoring progress and scenario analysis as tool features in guiding the collaborative decision‐making process that is based on sound partnership (Arulnathan et al, 2020; del Río Castro et al, 2021; Krause et al, 2020; Macellari et al, 2018; Potdar et al, 2016).…”

What makes businesses commit to nature conservation?

“…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.). Aside of the needed collaboration between businesses and policy makers, partnerships between companies and NGOs are essential as well (Macellari et al, 2018; Potdar et al, 2016). Among others, business‐NGO‐partnerships help companies to monitor the effects of their conservation efforts (Rainey et al, 2014), which in turn would help to justify expenditures, inform about effective forms of conservation action and ensure credibility.…”

“…As long as ecosystems or other natural capital are not owned as productive asset, the degradation of the natural environment is more of a systemic than an individual risk for a firms' core operation—especially for downstream sectors. Nevertheless, as Macellari, Gusmerotti, Frey, and Testa (2018) pointed out, also sectors with indirect interrelations with nature, such as finance, health care and retail, can be noticeably affected by environmental degradation, for instance, because of higher procurement costs, regulatory and reputational risks, higher insurance claims or health problems of employees and consumers. Given the severity and urgency of our global ecological crisis as a macrosocial challenge, it is important to better understand what drives companies' engagement for nature conservation in order to identify leverage points that might spur business commitments for public environmental goods.…”

Brazilian contributions to the Sustainable Development Goal 7 and policy implications

“…According to Chams and García-Blandón (2019), the SDGs are achieved through efforts to raise awareness of human capital, aiming at the adoption of new techniques and the insertion of innovative sustainable strategies in all economic sectors (Macellari et al, 2018). These efforts aim at human and environmental development (Bebbington and Unerman, 2018;Few et al, 2019).…”