By: Dwight Links
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) recently announced that all business sectors directly impact and depend on biodiversity around the world.
“This is a central finding of a landmark report published by the IPBES. Every business depends on biodiversity, and every business impacts biodiversity,” outlined the organisation in their ‘Impact and Dependence of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People’ report.
According to the IPBES, even companies not directly involved with nature have an impact on it, with its executive secretary Luthando Dziba noting that: “Even if they do not see themselves as nature-based, they rely – directly or indirectly – on material inputs, regulation of environmental conditions (such as flood mitigation and water supply) and non-material contributions such as tourism, recreation, education, and spiritual, aesthetic and cultural values.”
The report, however, outlines that businesses seldom incur any responsibility for the negative effects they cause.
“But businesses often bear little or no financial cost for their negative impacts and many cannot currently generate revenue from positive impacts on biodiversity,” reads the report.
Approved by the representatives of more than 150 member governments, including Namibia which joined in 2023, the 12th session of the IPBES plenary meeting in Manchester, UK, found that businesses are central to halting and reversing biodiversity loss. That said, several of these businesses often lack information on how to address their impacts and dependencies relating to biodiversity.
CREATING THE RIGHT ENVIRONMENT
According to the chairing committee, the report has been in development for over three years, with experts weighing in on the available data to compile said report.
“As 79 experts and various global stakeholders have provided valuable input into the report, it outlines that the business sector, in the current conditions in which they operate, is not always compatible with achieving a just and sustainable future, and these conditions also perpetuate systemic risks,” indicates the report.
Matt Jones, who co-chairs the committee, added that “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 businesses to help reverse this.”
He advised that businesses could implement transformative change drawing from the findings of the report, in turn creating a sustainable global economy and preventing the extinction of nature’s species and theirs alike.
INCENTIVES CAN BE PROBLEMATIC
According to the report and its findings, subsidies and incentives are encouraging normative behaviours of businesses around the world.
“In 2023, global public and private finance flows with directly negative impacts on nature were estimated at $7.3 trillion, of which private finance accounted for $4.9 trillion, with public spending on environmentally harmful subsidies of about $2.4 trillion,” pointed the findings in relation to the current ‘business as usual’ approach.
On the opposite end, only 3% of financing was spent on biodiversity conservation and restoration in the same year.
