The Ecosystems and Business Approach: New or important?

Chris Perceval on why ecosystem management by businesses is important and how it can raise the bar on corporate environmental performance.

The United Kingdom’s Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) is currently consulting various organisations to gather information about developments in business management of biodiversity.

Their findings will inform the United Nation’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which invited business to participate in the last Conference of Parties in 2006, and may yet raise the bar for corporate environmental performance when it meets again in 2008.

Certainly, involvement of business in the last Conference of Parties to the CBD was one of its main achievements (a few companies did get involved – mainly from sectors recognised as having a large direct footprint on the natural environment). With business now getting more involved, it bears thinking about what approaches, or frame of reference like ecosystems or biodiversity it is most useful to employ.

The Millennium Assessment has spawned what might be called the Ecosystems and Business approach. It recognises that companies play a crucial role in the interrelationships between living and non-living components of the natural environment and are themselves components within ecosystems. A bit like the first report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change providing a pre-cursor to obligatory climate change strategies for business, so too the Millennium Assessment provides a pre-cursor for ecosystem strategies for business.

There are some important ways in which the Ecosystems and Business approach provides a useful framework for business that aims to be future proof, and contribute to the goals of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Firstly, the Ecosystems and Business approach recognises the six specific challenges put forward by the Millennium Assessment, as an organising framework. The challenges include: Water Scarcity, Climate Change, Invasive Species, Overexploitation of Oceans, Nutrient Overloading and Habitat Loss. Each one provides a specific reference point against which to identify implications and gauge performance.

Secondly, the Ecosystems and Business approach articulates links between ecosystem services and human well-being, which was the basis of the Millennium Assessment. It identifies the importance of analysing use of and impact on ‘ecosystem services’, which include regulating, provisioning, supporting and cultural services. Because it provides new mechanisms for companies to understand its impact on both stakeholder groups (often fringe) and valuable benefits that the environment provides, this aspect of the Ecosystems and Business approach is likely to prove especially useful.

Thirdly, by emphasising ecosystem services, the Ecosystems and Business approach provides space within which to think about financially rewarding good ecosystem management. It caters for market frameworks that promote ecosystem services that might be needed (e.g. water purification or regulation by upstream water catchment management) and also for markets that promote biodiversity per se (e.g. biodiversity offsets).

There are some obstacles in the way of the emergence of the Ecosystems and Business approach. For a start, it must add sufficient new value in the minds of users to warrant its own title – distinct from Business and Biodiversity and yet as rigorous as anything that has come before. To add value, the approach must be grounded in reality, founded on science and substantiated with compelling case-studies. Only then will the development and deployment of meaningful new tools be made possible, which can contribute to better corporate strategies.

In conclusion, the Ecosystems and Business approach, which has emerged since the last Conference of Parties, provide an important perspective on corporate environmental performance. It is a useful framework which complements the goals Convention on Biological Diversity.

And if its firm foundations are built upon with care, concepts of ecosystem management will continue to provide important new ways to communicate the importance of biodiversity to internal and external audiences.

Chris Perceval is Corporate Development Manager at the Earthwatch Institute . He promotes sustainability in extractive industries and other partnerships advancing biodiversity, climate change and supply chain issues. Previously, Chris worked with corporate citizenship issues for the United National Global Compact, The International Business Leaders Forum and Business in the Community. For two years before joining Earthwatch, he also worked as a risk analyst for ENI, a multinational oil company. Contact +44 (0) 18 6531 8800 cperceval@earthwatch.org.uk