A just-published report linking biodiversity with business has found that every business impacts biodiversity and the growth of the global economy has been at the cost of immense biodiversity loss, which, in turn, now poses a critical systemic risk to economy, financial stability and human wellbeing.
The new report, published today by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), has concluded that even companies that might seem far-removed from nature or that do not see themselves as nature-based, directly or indirectly, impact biodiversity.
Approved by representatives of the more than 150 member governments of IPBES during the 12th session of the plenary of the intergovernmental platform hosted in Manchester, the UK, the report, known as the Business and Biodiversity Report, finds that “businesses are central to halting and reversing biodiversity loss, but that many often lack information to address their impacts and dependencies, as well as the risks and opportunities relating to biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people”.
Enabling environment essential
Prepared over three years by 79 leading experts from 35 countries and all regions of the world, drawn from science and the private sector, and in consultation with indigenous peoples and local communities, the report finds that the current conditions in which businesses operate are not always compatible with achieving a just and sustainable future, and that these conditions also perpetuate systemic risks.
“Businesses often face inadequate or perverse incentives, barriers that hinder efforts to reverse nature’s decline, an institutional environment with insufficient support, enforcement and compliance, as well as significant gaps in data and knowledge,” says the report, adding that the trend combines with business models that result in ever-increasing material consumption and an emphasis on profiteering by any means to contribute to the degradation of nature around the world.
Fundamental change possible
The report makes the point that fundamental change is possible and necessary to create an enabling environment to align what is profitable for business with what is beneficial for biodiversity and people.
“This report draws on thousands of sources, bringing together years of research and practice into a single integrated framework that shows both the risks of nature loss to business, and the opportunities for business to help reverse this,” said Matt Jones (UK), one of three co-chairs of the assessment.
“This is a pivotal moment for businesses and financial institutions, as well as governments and civil society, to cut through the confusion of countless methods and metrics (and) to take meaningful steps towards transformative change. Businesses and other key actors can either lead the way towards a more sustainable global economy or ultimately risk extinction,” adds the expert.
Nature’s decline triggered by business-as-usual incentives
Current conditions perpetuate business-as-usual pratices and do not support the transformative change necessary to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, says the report.
“In 2023, global public and private finance flows with directly negative impacts on nature were estimated at US dollars 7.3 trillion, of which private finance accounted for US dollars 4.9 trillion, with public spending on environmentally harmful subsidies of about US dollars 2.4 trillion,” explains the report.
It highlights the irony that the US dollars 220 billion in public and private finance flows that were directed in 2023 to activities contributing to the conservation and restoration of biodiversity represent just 3 per cent of the public funds and incentives that encourage harmful business behaviour or prevent behaviour beneficial to biodiversity.
“The loss of biodiversity is among the most serious threats to business,” said Stephen Polasky (USA), co-chair of the assessment. “Yet the twisted reality is that it often seems more profitable to businesses to degrade biodiversity than to protect it.”Business-as-usual may once have seemed profitable in the short term, but impacts across multiple businesses can have cumulative effects, aggregating to global impacts, which can cross ecological tipping points, warns the report.