The biodiversity crisis is very real, and business can play an essential role. Businesses should reduce air and water pollution to help biodiversity flourish.
Without fundamental change, extinctions will accelerate. Plants and animals are disappearing 10 times faster than expected, placing us on the path toward what scientists refer to as Earth’s sixth mass extinction event.
Humanity’s Dependence on Biodiversity
Biodiversity plays an integral role in human life both directly and indirectly. The diverse organisms and ecosystems that comprise our Earth’s living system – providing food, medicine, clean water, air pollution control and climate regulation among many other essential services – as well as helping maintain its health by helping ecosystems to withstand natural disasters like flooding and devastating storms.
Biodiversity is vital to life on Earth and supports everything we need for survival, yet without it humans could experience serious difficulties. A recent report warns that without increased efforts by nations around the world to preserve what remains of nature’s natural habitats, over one million plant and animal species could go extinct this century alone.
Human actions are driving this decline in biodiversity. Land use change (primarily relating to agriculture and cities) accounts for around 30% of global biodiversity loss; overfishing, hunting and harvesting for food, medicines or timber make up another 20%. Climate change, pollution and alien species all play significant roles.
Food, energy, infrastructure and fashion value chains account for more than 90% of human-induced pressure on biodiversity. Businesses which rely on degraded natural ecosystems for products or services could experience supply chain disruption and higher operating costs; but also have an opportunity to lead in protecting and restoring biodiversity in locations which matter most.
Good news is that biodiversity crises can be avoided! All we need to do is strengthen foundational laws designed to protect the environment, reform our methods of governance for land, seas and skies, stop accepting campaign donations from polluting industries that exert undue influence over legislation meant to regulate their impacts, support sustainable fisheries with limited destructive industrial fishing practices and adopt more regenerative agricultural techniques that support biodiversity.
The Impact of Biodiversity Loss on Society
Biodiversity loss imperils decades of development gains and endangers the lives of billions. Ecosystem services that provide food, fresh water and carbon storage may become less efficient over time – their annual value estimated at $150 trillion; more than twice global GDP!
Human activities are the main source of biodiversity loss, with land-use change and direct overexploitation of natural resources accounting for more than 60 per cent of overall pressure. These activities also lead to indirect pressures such as species being forced out of their natural environments. Hunting, harvesting and removal of plant and animal species from their environment causing direct overexploitation with tropical rainforests and coral reef systems being particularly affected.
Climate crisis poses an additional threat to biodiversity, with habitat destruction and range shifts accounting for approximately 50 percent of total pressure on biodiversity. Furthermore, climatic change is disrupting ecological processes like leaf budding, insect hatching and bird egg-laying – impacting their interactions between species significantly.
Even as biodiversity declines on a grand scale, individual species are not equally threatened by its loss. For instance, desert and polar mountain regions face higher risks of animal extinction than tropical rainforests or coral reefs; rapid population decline may have indirect ramifications as it disrupts social structures of species or increases inbreeding among related individuals.
Remind yourself that biodiversity loss is a global issue; decisions and actions in one region have an effect on biodiversity in another region, necessitating global solutions to address it.
The biodiversity crisis can be seen as a warning from nature that humans’ values prioritize short-term profits over more holistic relationships with nature that honor respect, reciprocity, and sacredness – which can be found among many indigenous cultures. The crisis serves as a sign from nature that these misplaced priorities may lead to irreparable damage being done to nature itself.
The Impact of Biodiversity Loss on Business
Biodiversity loss threatens the sustainability of all businesses, regardless of their sector of operation. Many firms rely directly or indirectly on natural resources from a range of natural sources for products and services they provide, as well as own or manage areas home to biodiversity. Furthermore, four value chains–food, energy infrastructure and fashion–are currently responsible for more than 90% of manmade pressure on biodiversity.
Loss of biodiversity represents a direct business risk, endangering supply chain security and driving up raw material costs. Companies that fail to address their impact on biodiversity risk an outrage from consumers and investors as well as losing their social license to operate.
Companies with biodiversity-friendly supply chains and operations have the potential to develop valuable new products and services while expanding their value proposition. Unfortunately, however, implementing biodiversity-friendly practices is often an interminably long and complex journey requiring multiple disciplines, collaboration between NGOs, governments, researchers, philanthropists and other stakeholders and may require multiple efforts from business. Unfortunately this topic has historically proven difficult for business to address head on.
Biodiversity can often be an afterthought in sustainable strategy, leaving companies overwhelmed by its complexity. This may be compounded by the fact that unlike carbon emissions reduction strategies, biodiversity strategies do not have one “right” solution that fits all companies equally; each business’s biodiversity strategy must be tailored specifically for their own unique needs and risks; makeshift initiatives not addressing key issues will likely fail – for instance a food company specializing in coffee and cocoa sales would not likely make progress by undertaking projects on beehives above their European headquarters!
Businesses seeking meaningful biodiversity results should seek to become leaders of biodiversity conservation. This requires being transparent about their environmental footprint, working collaboratively to promote solutions that benefit biodiversity, and working with suppliers and customers to reduce impacts from activities on biodiversity. Furthermore, making biodiversity an integral component of business policies, investments, and decisions must also become a top priority.
The Impact of Biodiversity Loss on Health
Biodiversity loss has serious repercussions for human health. Many plants, animals and microorganisms we rely on for food, medicine, fuel and building materials are dependent upon biodiversity for survival; pollinators provide pollination services while pest control by pollinators are essential ecosystem services; this in turn allows ecosystems to provide life-giving resources like clean water and soil; in addition, nature provides vital raw materials used by pharmaceutical manufacturers – estimates are that up to half of modern pharmaceutical medicines come from natural products found within nature such as plants, fungi or insects – decreased biodiversity threatens our access to such vital treatments;
Loss of biodiversity is also a significant contributor to the spread of infectious diseases in humans and other animals. Studies have demonstrated how particular species in ecological communities contribute to transmission of pathogens when removed, particularly amplifying species like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, HIV or severe acute respiratory syndrome infections that have evolved resistance or switched hosts (such as HIV and severe acute respiratory syndrome).
Extinction rates may provide one measure of biodiversity loss, but they fail to take into account all of the contributing factors that contribute to it. Furthermore, such numbers fail to take into account changes in ecosystem sizes; such as when large islands lose habitat due to changes in population dynamics affecting biodiversity levels.
An increasing body of evidence supports the assertion that biodiversity loss is directly responsible for an array of human health concerns worldwide, such as hunger and malnutrition, water scarcity, air pollution and climate-change related disasters. Notably, most of its risks disproportionately affect poor populations across the world.
Evidently, now is the time to address biodiversity’s crisis. Businesses that do not take this step risk eroding their goodwill and social license to operate, along with losing opportunities for growth and profitability.
Companies can contribute by integrating biodiversity considerations into their business strategies and operations, including procurement practices. Furthermore, companies should help foster innovative research on how biodiversity and health intersect and encourage cross-sectoral collaboration – this is critical because structures that govern biodiversity assessments and health risk assessments typically operate separately with pollutants being assessed under one department while diseases associated with them being assessed under another without much coordination between departments or oversight from management bodies.
