Recently the slogan "Business and Biodiversity“ has brought a fresh impetus to the debate revolving around the importance of biodiversity for businesses and the role of enterprises in the protection of biodiversity.
The most important questions are:
- How can companies help to stop the loss of biodiversity as the EU member states have pledged to?
- Where and to which extent is the private sector dependent on biodiversity?
- What business opportunities and risks arise from the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity?
Around 40% of the world economy is based on biological products or processes. Companies thus profit directly or indirectly from the variety of intact ecosystems, the diversity of species and the genetic biodiversity in the extraction of raw materials and their production, as well as in the distribution and the marketing of products. At the same time, the loss of biological diversity – for example due to a shortage of natural resources – is a risk for corporate success. In addition to that, businesses lose their access to instruction manuals and recipes for innovative products and services offered by natural ecosystems that could prove highly profitable.
Various companies have an especially crucial relationship to biodiversity. These include:
- Companies with heavy direct impact on ecosystems and biological diversity such as the raw material industries (e.g. oil, gas, mining)
- Companies that are dependent on intact ecosystem but are at the same time influencing them with their activities: tourism, fishery, forestry and paper, agriculture and food industries.
- Companies from the finance and insurance sector (risk management, asset security, loan issuance) as facilitators of strategic economic development.