Biodiversity - Accounting for Nature
What is biodiversity?
Biodiversity is the variety of life on earth. It includes all the different types of living things and habitats. It is often referred to as the ‘web of life’. Our societies and economies depend on it.
It is rapidly rising up the corporate agenda as more and more companies understand the need to protect it.
Why biodiversity matters to businesses
Every business relies on nature, has an impact on and is impacted by it.
For businesses, biodiversity means everything from clean air and water, fuel and food. For example, agribusiness relies on the diversity of wild relatives of major food crops, as a resource to ensure crop resistance to disease and pests.
Businesses rely on biodiversity for the wellbeing of their staff, their consumers, in their own operations and along their supply chains.
Businesses are also coming under increasing pressure to support protection of biodiversity, and as such will be expected to know about biodiversity action and to engage with it. The International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group, describes biodiversity as a fundamental component of long-term business survival.
Benefits of supporting the protection biodiversity can include:
- mitigating risk of regulatory non-compliance, reputational damage and supply chain disruption
- employee engagement and wellbeing
- enhanced reputation
- achieving responsible-business targets.
Biodiversity and Chartered Accountants Ireland
On March 3, 2022, Chartered Accountants Ireland Chartered Accountants Ireland joined a profession-wide commitment to reverse nature loss. Working together as part of the Global Accounting Alliance (GAA), the CEOs of 10 of the world’s leading accountancy institutes signed the call to action ‘Nature is Everyone’s Business’ to signal the important role the profession plays in this crisis. In these articles, find out how nature is everyone's business, and what businesses can do to protect it.
Actions
Here are some actions you can take in your business to combat nature loss (courtesy of Business in the Community Ireland):
- follow Business in the Community Ireland and Business in the Community Northern Ireland's biodiversity content
- educate your senior team and put biodiversity at the top of their agenda
- take part in collective campaigns such as Business for Nature’s #MakeItMandatory
- collaborate with your peers to understand what has worked well for their business
- integrate biodiversity into your climate action plans because Nature-Based Solutions will play a key role in both mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change
- incorporate biodiversity into your Environmental Management System (EMS).