Business and Biodiversity Flashcards
(17 cards)
Earth’s ecological limit
We are currently living 50% beyond the earth’s ecological limit and accumulating an ecological debt
These challenges are driven by huge government subsidies
- especially agriculture, forestry and fishery
Major commodity trade routes
We get many resources from Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia
For example
- Soy bean production from Brazil and the US
- oil palm from Indonesia
Policy framing
UNFCCC - Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) - Net Zero pledges
CBD Targets 15 (disclosure), 16 (sustainable consumption) - Nature positive narratives
EU Directives (restoration and deforestation free supply chain) and the “Green Deal”
National laws (often follow global and regional)
Business voluntary commitments and pledges
Responses from science
Guidance and guidelines
Business risk screening
Business nature dependencies
Supply chain traceability
Tools, platforms
Metrics
Consultant work
Guidance and guidelines: Task Force for Climate-Related Financial Disclosure
Aligned to Target 15 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework
A package of guidance materials for companies and finance bodies
On the 16th of January 2024, the TNFD announced the inaugural cohort of Early Adopters - about 80 global companies so far
Science Based Targets Network for Nature (SBTN)
5 guidance steps
About 160 companies working to set science-based targets for land and water
- Assess
- Prioritize
- Measure, set and disclose
- Act
- Track
Certification of products to reduce impacts
Certification and Round-tables as a solution
The problem: Unsustainable practices and unacceptable impacts
The solution: Commodity roundtables - agree on impacts, understand global performance and develop standards
Round table stakeholders:
- companies (retailers, food, groups, processors, traders, etc)
- Financial institutions/banks
- NOGs
- Trade associations… and other interested parties
Standards and certification to improve business performance
Use market forces to drive performance
Improve impacts of key, influential operators
Example of timber certification scheme - Forest Stewardship Council
- Reduction of environmental impact of logging activities
- Legality verification - follow all applicable laws
- Demonstrated long-term land tenure and use rights
- Respect rights of workers and indigenous peoples
- Equitable use and sharing of benefits
- Identification and appropriate management of areas that need special protection (e.g. cultural or sacred sites, habitat or endangered animals or plants)
FSC has been shows to deliver benefits
Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)
Since November 2005, new plantings cannot replace primary forests or high conservation value areas
Waste recycling
Erosion and degradation of soils are minimized
Pollution is reduced
Use of fires is avoided
Challenges with certification schemes
Hard for small holder farmers to join
Many big companies don’t want to join
Premium prices; not always there for certified products
Only about 20% of a commodity gets certified
80% still following ‘ business as usual’
Not always clear the schemes are delivering impacts
Bad companies need different approaches than certification
Still a need for laws and level playing field for all companies (e.g. EU deforestation free supply chain regulation)
Tools to reduce business “risk”
Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool
Market leader with 1000s of companies now using
Tools to understand and manage business dependency on nature
Economic sector trade risks and dependency on nature tool: ENCORE
- Underpinned by database on business dependencies on nature (based on literature and expert opinion)’
Commodity Footprints
Trade impacts on nature
Likely to use STAR/LIFE metrics in the future
Relevant to Target 16 of Global Biodiversity Framework
Importance of metrics
There are lots of metrics already…
23+ metrics for business use
Ecosystem Conditioned Focused:
- Mean Species Abundance
- Biodiversity Intactness Index
Species Focused:
- Species Threat Abatement and Restoration
What next for metrics?
Increasing importance of national metrics
Wider uptake of business metrics
Agreeing a minimum set of metrics for government and business use
Automation of metric calculation through use of technology
Solving challenge of sustainable funding for metric production and dissemination
Science needs- guidance and policy
SBTN needs to include biodiversity pressure reduction targets (they resist this and focus on habitat change and water use)
TNFD is focused on business dependencies, where the science of ecosystem services is not perhaps strong enough to allow accurate links between business needs (for stuff) and biodiversity depletion outcomes
The EU DR has forest loss metric, but nothing on biodiversity values in those
forests
Supply chains need to be mapped…….
Supply chains tools are only just starting to include biodiversity metrics,
which are based off metrics like MSA or STAR/LIFE (IUCN red list)
“Nature positive” commitments from companies are often challenging to measure
There is very limited science that certification schemes deliver more that
doing nothing, and the measurement of biodiversity outcomes is often quite weak
