For some time, biodiversity has been talked about as the next big sustainability issue. Dubbed the “new carbon”, and given it’s own international year of recognition by the UN in 2010 (now extended to a decade), its clear that this is one challenge that’s here to stay.
So if this is the case, how should business set out to address its impact on biodiversity? The TEEB report (The Economics of Ecosystems & Biodiversity) says that the first step for business is to identify impacts and dependencies and then to begin to measure and report impacts, dependencies and responses. However, each of these steps presents it’s own significant challenges, meaning that knowing where to start can be extremely difficult.
To try to address some of the questions around how corporate sustainability professionals should approach biodiversity as a key business issue, we’re running an online Q&A discussion with a panel of experts.
The discussion will take place on Thursday 3rd March from 12 until 3pm and will cover areas such as:
• Is it possible (and useful) for a business to measure its biodiversity footprint?
• Should we even be talking about biodiversity as a distinct business issue (or should it in fact be something that is integrated into sustainability thinking across an organisation’s operations)?
• How can cross-sector collaboration help in addressing the biodiversity challenge?
• What does corporate best practice in terms of biodiversity look like at the moment? Who is leading and how can other organisations learn from them?
• How can investment in biodiversity and ecosystem services be encouraged?
• How can risk due to biodiversity loss be quantified and communicated?
You can either post your questions now or join us next week to follow the whole discussion. The Q&A will take place in the comments section on this page. If you can’t join us on Thursday, sign up to receive our newsletter and we’ll send you a link to a summary of the Q&A.
