A lot of businesses keep asking us why they should care about Biodiversity and what the link is to their business.
So here’s a short overview for you to understand why biodiversity is vital for you and your business.
What’s biodiversity?
Biodiversity is the biological variety and variability of life on Earth and is the reason why life on Earth exists.
It’s the base of all life on Earth – including us humans – as well as for most of our current economic activities.
Without biodiversity we cannot breathe clean air, drink clean water, eat food and live a decent life.
Why is biodiversity loss an issue for business?
Despite on-going efforts, we are eroding this biodiversity worldwide at a pace that is severely damaging the natural ecosystems that provide us with food, water and clean air.
This decline is projected to worsen with business-as-usual scenarios, enhanced by climate change. This in turn could pose significant risks to economic, financial and social stability.
And as government regulation and societal expectations change, the risks to business from biodiversity issues will likely increase.
According to the IPBES, the top 5 direct causes of biodiversity loss are
- Habitat destruction (e.g. for agriculture or housing)
- Overexploitation of natural resources (e.g. overfishing)
- Climate change (a results of our dependency on fossil fuels leading to global warming)
- Pollution (e.g. industrial pollution, mining, fracking…)
- Invasive alien species (a result of globalization)
These root causes are all linked to our current way of living, doing business, occupying all the space, of over-exploiting natural resources.
📍 Biodiversity loss and Climate change are two sides of the same coin.
There’s no quickly scalable artificial carbon capture tech available, so we need to protect our natural “carbon sinks” (forests, wetlands, oceans, soils, mangroves…), for them to continue to absorb our extra GHG emissions. If we continue destroying nature and biodiversity, we destroy our means of removing GHG from the atmosphere. Restoration is among the cheapest and quickest nature based climate mitigation measures to implement.
What you can do
- Inform yourself and understand the issue.
- Participate in a Biodiversity fresk, a serious game to learn about the cause and effect of biodiversity loss (and of which we are proud facilitators)
- Be aware of your impacts on biodiversity in your consumption choices
- Connect with nature and get to know her: we protect what we know and love!
What can you do as a business
- Do a risk assessment and see how your business is impacted by biodiversity loss. Some sectors have a very high risk (food, pharma, textile, tourism, cosmetics…)
- Evaluate your impacts on biodiversity and take action to reduce your negative impacts, enhance positive ones.
- Internationally recognized frameworks and alliances for biodiversity and business can be helpful such as the TNFD, the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures or the OP2B, the One Planet Business for Biodiversity.
- Raise awareness among your colleagues and help them take action. A Biodiversity Fresk can be a great tool here.
- Engage clients, suppliers, and business partners on this topic and reduce your negative impacts together.
- Ensure your industry lobbying doesn’t hinder efforts to protect and restore biodiversity.
- Avoid greenwashing on this topic (or any other Sustainability-related efforts).
About teams4purpose
Our mission is to help you take action for Sustainability and positive impact in your job and business.
Our Services
- We help you co-create your Sustainability strategy and roadmap.
- We provide Sustainability advisory during CSR implementation.
- We offer training on the foundations of Business Sustainability & CSR.
- We support you in creating awareness and engagement among stakeholders via workshops and serious games – we are proud facilitators of the Climate and Biodiversity
Fresks.
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