An interesting thread unrolled on Twitter on the last day of COP15, the biodiversity-oriented conference of the parties held in Kunming, China from October 11-15. COP15 was, according to the New York Times, “The Most Important Global Meeting You’ve Probably Never Heard Of.” The lack of fanfare surrounding this year’s UN Biodiversity Conference is nothing new — the conference, held every two years, typically remains in the shadow of the other, climate-focused COP, which is held annually and in its 26th iteration.
The Twitter thread started when, comparing the public’s approach to biodiversity loss to that of climate change, post-doc researcher in equity in nature-based solutions, Stephen Woroniecki (@StephenWoroniec) asked, “I wonder why it’s so difficult to imagine the existential threat of biodiversity loss. Any thoughts?” This question led to an interesting discussion on humanity’s relationship to nature. Responses ranged from the fact that we’ve lived apart from nature for so long that we don’t recognize its centrality to our lives, to the fact that while we understand that the climate crisis is not contained by a single nation, the biodiversity crisis is seen as a sovereign matter, rooted in specific places with very specific jurisdictions responsible for it.
Envisioning a Ministry of Nature
This final point on jurisdiction, made by Dr. Michelle Lim (@FutureEnvLaw), a global assessment fellow for IPBES, can be expounded upon by acknowledging that this concept of jurisdiction, the extent of the authority over nature and its protection and recovery, is generally buried deeply within the structure of national governments. When we look at how biodiversity is governed, and how the policies and regulations around it are designed, it is clear that nature is considered a thing apart instead of an intrinsic component of life.
Governments in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere have various departments for nature, but these departments (or bureaus or agencies) are generally housed in larger government divisions. There is never a Minister of Nature nor a seat at the cabinet table for biodiversity. In some cases, nature is split across government departments — in the U.S., for example, the Department of Agriculture oversees soils and forests, whereas fish and wildlife fall under the Department of the Interior. Those two departments loosely share responsibility of plants, and the Environmental Protection Agency handles air and water.
There is a direct line from jurisdictional weaknesses to the ongoing destruction of nature both done and enabled by governments. Tony Juniper, Chair of Natural England (itself sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs), spoke at a Commons Select Committee on Biodiversity in 2020. He pointed out that the majority of the success stories associated with biodiversity (e.g., species recovery, ecological restoration) are overseen by nature-oriented agencies and departments, while the negative impacts are addressed by other government entities, like departments of transportation and economic development. Imagine the difference if a department of nature had as much standing as transportation or treasury, or if every government department was mandated and funded to staff an office of biodiversity. If the functions of finance can run through every government department, so should nature.
The Case for Uniting the COPs
Another jurisdictional issue rests in the case of the dueling COPs. On one side we have COP26 with world leaders, celebrities, businesses and NGOs dusting off their suitcases to travel to Glasgow with exhortations from leading media outlets ringing in their ears, white papers on climate mitigation and resilience weighing down their briefcases and a sense of importance attending their every tweet. On the other side we had COP15 — internet searches for this conference returned mainly Chinese news outlet articles. Celebrities and high-level politicians were far and few between. During the week of COP15, the leading biodiversity groups in the U.S. remained markedly silent about the event. Between October 11-15, the Audubon Society tweeted about climate change seven times and the biodiversity crisis once in a post about Indigenous Peoples’ Day. COP15 was not mentioned all week. The National Wildlife Federation mentioned climate change twice in the same period without a single mention of COP15. A gambling person would have no problem betting that these same groups will be loudly engaged with COP26.
The uneven attention given to COP26 has exacerbated a sense of competition between the equally existential, and closely intertwined, crises of climate and nature. Merging the two COPs would ensure that the declarations, commitments and decisions surrounding these challenges are integrated, and that efforts to address each issue positively reinforce each other rather than cause competition for attention, resources and, most importantly, government follow-through. In restructuring the COPs, the UN should draw inspiration from The Earthshot Prize, a global funding program that “recognises the interconnectivity between environmental challenges and the urgent need to tackle them together.”
A New Vision for Nature
We also need this merger because COP15 was built on the back of a failure of epic proportions. Of the 20 time-bound and measurable targets for 2020, adopted in 2010 with great enthusiasm at COP10 in Japan, not one has been met. Since then, the world has gone into a nature deficit exceeding its planetary boundaries for biosphere integrity. Governments failed to act and nature suffered. The Kunming Declaration, the joint statement agreed to by the delegates to COP15 declares that putting biodiversity on a path to recovery is a defining challenge of this decade and sets out a number of commitments in support of the development of a post-2020 agenda including: mainstreaming nature into decision making (maybe my Minister of Nature idea is not that farfetched), strengthening environmental laws, addressing nature-destroying subsidies and incentives, and enhancing collaboration with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
At the bottom of all these words and declarations lies one simple truth: we need to stop the destruction of nature. We know what the drivers of destruction are. We know where the decision points lie, and we know how to fix and restore nature once its destruction has been halted. But it’s only in the jurisdictions that these things can happen. It’s in the departments of transportation and economic development that incentives and subsidies can be addressed, in the departments of finance and treasury that the funding of $950 billion per year be allocated and in the environmental agencies that pollution in all its forms can be reduced and eliminated. We need to address these issues while making way for freestanding ministries of nature to step in to weave the frayed threads of our ecosystems back together, then deploy an army of ecologists to build back the color and vibrancy of our natural world.
https://tandemglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/bluebell-g5d1640de6_1920-e1691083761327.jpg500800Margaret O’Gormanhttps://tandemglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/tandem-global-logo-exp.svgMargaret O’Gorman2021-10-27 07:28:592023-08-03 13:29:30Dueling COPs and the Ministry of Nature: The Question of Jurisdiction over Biodiversity
If 2020 taught us anything, it was that plans can be derailed in an instant, priorities change overnight and what we consider to be pressing challenges one day can become low priority issues the next. In 2020 all sectors — business, government and NGO — saw their best laid plans unravel or become irrelevant in the global chaos of the pandemic.
As we look to 2021, it might be foolish to make predictions since the world is still an uncertain place. But five key issues taking center stage in 2021 give cause for modest hope and provide signals for businesses looking to advance biodiversity protection and ecosystem restoration in the new year.
The Super Year for Nature Reboot
2020 was meant to be the Super Year for Nature. It started in Davos in January, when the biodiversity crisis was brought to the forefront of the World Economic Forum. Throughout the year, a plethora of important meetings like IUCN World Congress and a UN General Assembly dedicated to biodiversity were slated to occur. 2020 would then culminate in October with the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
COP15 is now scheduled to take place in the second quarter of 2021 in Kunming, China, where signatories to the convention will adopt a Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. The proposed vision of the Framework is that “by 2050, biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for all people.”
While the role of business was largely omitted when the Aichi Biodiversity Targets (the precursor to the Post-2020 Framework) were adopted, the Post-2020 Framework, learning from the SDGs, “aims to galvanize urgent and transformative action by Governments and all of society, including indigenous peoples and local communities, civil society, and businesses, to achieve the outcomes it sets out in its vision, mission, goals and targets…”
The Post-2020 Framework currently proposes the following as the main expectations of business:
That nature is valued by business in the form of ecosystem service valuation and financial disclosure
That business supports the implementation of the framework with financial resources
That business contributes to the “whole-of-society” approach considered an essential enabling condition for success
As a footnote to the mission of the Framework, that biodiversity is mainstreamed across sectors of society and economy
Considering the failure to achieve any of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, and the continued trends that have caused the World Economic Forum to highlight biodiversity loss as an “existential threat” in its annual Global Risks Report and highlight the failure of collective action to address it as a significant blind spot, the Post-2020 Framework must be emboldened with inspiring, actionable items for the private sector, indeed for all sectors.
Business engagement with the Post-2020 Framework is being pushed by the Business for Nature Coalition, of which WHC is a member. In 2020, the coalition secured commitments to its Call to Action when more than 600 companies with revenues of US$ 4.1 trillion pledged to call on governments to adopt policies now to reverse nature loss in this decade.
Underlining the emergence of nature as a business concern, the GreenBiz State of Business 2021 report acknowledges the increasing recognition of nature, and the risk the biodiversity crisis poses, optimistically stating that “once nature firmly takes root on the balance sheet, more companies likely will make investments that will help heal the natural ecosystem and preserve the world’s wealth.”
The Super Year reboot was supercharged at the One Planet Summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in early January 2021. This summit saw world leaders embrace the biodiversity emergency like never before, resulting in a pledge to shift 30% of multilateral climate funding to biodiversity and Nature-based Solutions (NbS) for climate. The summit also saw more than 50 nations commit to the 30 by 30 initiative, a plan to create protected areas covering 30% of the planet by 2030.
Notably, the U.S. is the only UN-recognized country in the world (apart from the Holy See) that has not ratified the CBD. In 2021, pressure is on the Biden administration to work with the Senate to ratify the Convention so that the U.S. can play as significant a role in the Post-2020 Framework as it did in the Paris Accord
Redirecting Capital Flows
Performance Standard 6 of the Equator Principles has long been the main financial instrument for biodiversity protection. There is little evidence that the standard has achieved significant uplift for nature or slowed ecosystem loss; its adherence to the mitigation hierarchy has guided many companies toward the convenience of offsets without furthering other NbS practices. Recently established initiatives, however, bring the promise of more holistic financial tools in support of nature.
Following his launch of Terra Carta, an initiative to advance the concept of sustainable markets, the Prince of Wales also established the Natural Capital Investment Alliance, which aims to mobilize $10 billion toward natural capital investments. One of the partners in the Alliance is HSBC Pollination Climate Asset Management, which offers investment opportunities in nature-forward businesses like regenerative farms and sustainable fisheries, which promote biodiversity protection.
In addition, the Taskforce on Nature Financial Disclosure will deploy the learnings from the Taskforce for on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure to build a framework that will give corporations, and the financial institutions that support them, a clearer understanding of nature-related risk and impacts. This will inspire capital investments that finally fulfill the potential of Performance Standard 6.
Carbon Offsets: A Critical Examination
In recent years, NbS has emerged for the private sector as an effective tool for climate mitigation (reducing carbon) and adaptation (reducing impact of climate change). A Trillion Trees are being promised and every proposed approach to limit warming to 1.5o C contains a nature-based pathway, whether through wetland restoration, peatland conservation or soil health recovery.
For most companies, carbon offsetting and NbS have come together with a new focus on reforestation, afforestation and increased forest management —actions that can be beneficial for both climate and biodiversity. Trees are seen by the private sector as an attractive and accessible offset, easy to measure, easy to invest in and easy to promote.
While the years leading to 2020 saw the solidification of forests as a key player in carbon offsets, articles published by Bloomberg at the end of 2020 highlighted issues with accountability, additionality and reversibility, reporting that The Nature Conservancy sold carbon credits for forests not under threat of destruction and GreenTrees LLC sold carbon credits for existing forests planted with federal dollars on private lands. This attention to flaws in the governance of carbon offsetting poses a risk for the companies involved, but also creates an opportunity for NGOs, registries and companies to adopt universal standards.
Carbon offsetting through forest investments is a viable approach for corporate action, climate mitigation and biodiversity recovery but 2021 will likely see increased scrutiny. This will result in stronger guidance, more accountability, and the adoption of practices that embrace additionality in a significant way, promoting a shift towards The Oxford Offsetting Principles and other rigorous frameworks.
Environmental Justice: A Corporate Concern
In 2020, across the country and around the world, communities sought racial justice, equitable treatment and access to opportunity. As discourse on equity blossomed, climate justice and environmental justice emerged as significant challenges.
Studies from Italy and the U.S. conducted in the early days of the pandemic found that communities with greater air pollution had higher death rates from Covid-19. The New York Times reported that historic redlining (racially-based practices that restrict resource access) led to neighborhoods of color lacking urban tree canopies and disproportionately suffering from heat island impacts. These findings speak to decades of studies showing disparate health and wellness outcomes for differently resourced communities across the planet.
A growing call for marginalized communities to be included in environmental decision-making is emerging as plans are presented for a healthier planet, especially the 30 by 30 proposal. The IPBES and others have asked that indigenous voices are given equal representation and that community knowledge is valued on a par with academic research. In New Jersey, legislation passed to give communities greater say in the pollution burden they are willing to accept is considered the strongest environmental justice law in the nation.
WHC contributed to the conversation in 2020, publishing an examination of the ways in which urban industrial lands can contribute Nature-based Solutions to improve health outcomes. In 2021, with funding from the USFS Urban and Community Forestry Program and the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, WHC will continue supporting ecological restoration on urban industrial lands. This work will result in a road map to encourage more companies to take a community-first approach with their nature investments, especially in communities overburdened by the impacts of industry.
Engagement with Nature
One of the silver linings of 2020 was increased interaction with, and awareness of, nature. When recreation, education, entertainment and retail spaces closed across the globe, nature remained open, providing myriad experiences to locked-down families. Backyard birdwatching, gardening, hiking and exploring the outdoors became simple pleasures and accessible distractions. Outdoor spaces offered safe places to alleviate isolation and depression. Outdoor classrooms provided safe educational opportunities. Time slowed and our awareness of nature quickened.
Across WHC’s community, innovative approaches to maintaining conservation programs on corporate lands with restricted access were developed. Employees, like those on the intrepid team at Bacardi Bottling in Jacksonville, Florida found they could continue their conservation efforts and include employees in safely distanced ways. As businesses reopen and employees return, outdoor activities are perfect for a safe and social re-entry.
As we build back to a new normal, it may be easy to lose sight of nature again, but it would be unwise to do so. Widespread appreciation for the outdoors will support better investments in nature, which are badly needed to achieve any of the goals we set for the planet. As we enter the UN Decade of Ecological Restoration, a ten-year effort to restore our planet, we need to harness the momentum gained, and lessons learned, in 2020, and use them to secure what Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, calls that most undervalued common good: nature.
Given that these topics speak to larger matters of global stewardship, transparency, equity and post-pandemic recovery, they are critical for everyone to consider. Companies are especially well-suited to champion these five issues as they integrate nature across operations and implement community-first conservation efforts.
In this second Super Year for Nature, these issues aren’t the only ones making strides. We’re also keeping an eye on:
Continued evolution and understanding of the role of Nature-Based Solutions.
Efforts to bring nature into supply chain greening efforts.
Growing the number of corporate commitments to biodiversity.
NOTE: This post, first published on 1/19/2021, has been edited post-publication.
https://tandemglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/nature-3048299_1920-e1691083822933.jpg498801Margaret O’Gormanhttps://tandemglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/tandem-global-logo-exp.svgMargaret O’Gorman2021-01-19 14:33:292023-08-03 13:30:35Five Hot Topics for Corporate Conservation in 2021
2020 was meant to be the Super Year for Nature. It was all planned out. In January, the World Economic Forum in Davos would highlight biodiversity as a rising global risk. In April, the 50th anniversary of Earth Day would kick off celebrations of what can be achieved. The International Day for Biodiversity in May and World Environment Day in June would bring the focus onto nature and what we need to do to protect it. IUCN’s World Congress in Marseille, also in June, would keep the conversation going and provide a platform for calls to action, commitments and commentary on the state of the natural world. The effort would culminate in October in Kunming, China at the Convention for Biological Diversity’s COP15 where a post-2020 framework for biodiversity would be adopted that would send us all – national and subnational governments, NGOs, private sector entities and scientists – into 2021 with renewed vigor for our work of restoring and protecting the planet’s natural resources.
But nature had other ideas.
In early 2020, the virus that would become known as COVID-19 jumped from its animal host to humans (likely via illegal trade in wildlife) and ground the world to a screeching halt. Economies shuttered, health systems became overwhelmed and the perpetual clamor of human activity on the planet diminished to a background buzz of essential employees, contactless commerce and lives increasingly led in the digital domain.
While this great withdrawal has had, and will continue to have, repercussions on every aspect of society, one of the relatively positive outcomes has been a new relationship with nature and an enhanced appreciation for the systems and services the Earth provides to us. We’ve seen the photos of clear skies in India and clean water in Venice, and learned that daily emissions of greenhouse gases plunged by 17% in April when compared to 2019.
We’ve also had personal experiences as nature had put us in a time-out from our normal and fragmented pursuits, slowing us down, bringing us together and limiting our movements. Now the flurry of a bird in our backyard becomes our family entertainment, the emergence of spring across the northern hemisphere becomes our calendar, and our local streets, parks and green spaces become our new movie theaters. Irish journalist Paddy Woodworth recorded a beautiful appreciation of our new-found ability to stop, stare and listen to the world around us. Like the creative people who have given us concerts, plays and events online, nature provides us with a diversion and a solution.
Across Wildlife Habitat Council, we’ve seen habitat project managers bring their work home, transferring their passion for conservation to their own backyards and engaging family members in environmental education and planting efforts. Our family-friendly webinars were viewed over 3,000 times, with many watching as a family unit. We also created tools to support conservation in this time of crisis.
In late May, we commemorated International Day for Biodiversity with a theme of “Our Solutions are in Nature.” While this theme may seem to be drawn directly from the pandemic, it was actually inspired by the work of the IPBES whose report in 2019 laid out, in stark terms, the essential contributions of nature to humanity, the plight of nature globally and the absolute imperative for us to take action for nature for our collective future. This report, with the stark headline 1 Million Species At Risk of Extinction, is the policy foundation for the 2020 Super Year for Nature.
So now what?
This pandemic has done what the IPBES report tried to do. It moved nature into the headline news. It has shown that a disregard for nature and increased pressure on natural systems can wreak havoc on the global economy. It has re-established, in non-indigenous communities, an appreciation for the natural world that had faded beneath the rattle of post-war industrialization and the hum of increasing urbanization.
There are many opinions about how to return to a new normal and use this pause to place our relationship with the planet on a better path. This increasingly common call seeks a re-built economy with green jobs, green investments and a green bottom line. The UN Global Compact (of which WHC is a member) brought together 155 companies with a $2 trillion+ market capitalization to call for a net-zero recovery. And while many thought leaders narrow the focus to climate change challenges and opportunities, strong voices are raised for nature as well.
Inger Andersen, head of UNEP and longtime champion for nature, admonishes that, “An important pillar in our post-COVID recovery plan must be to arrive at an ambitious, measurable and inclusive framework, because keeping nature rich, diverse and flourishing is part and parcel of our life’s support system.” A group of green leaders in the UK, including the Minister for the Environment, Lord Zach Goldsmith, writing in response to an opinion piece linking COVID recovery to climate change, introduced nature as a key solution: “Today, the world urgently needs a new such commitment to nature as we recover from COVID-19. Nature should be at the heart of the recovery we seek.”
There are many options for the private sector to put nature at the heart of the recovery we seek:
Recommit to environmental education so that the generation of learners who experienced this crisis can better understand the natural systems we live in and how we can work to avoid such crises in the future. Across WHC Conservation Certification® programs, 43% have an environmental education or awareness component. It may be tempting to cut such programs under cost containment efforts, like the short-sighted action of Montclair University and New Jersey’s DEP, which are currently seeking to shutter an environmental education resource that changed the lives of generations of students at a time when such resources are more important than ever. Such disinvestment in environmental education today will have consequences for the future, removing one of the key methods for shaping attitudes of future planetary stewards.
Invest in conservation careers – In the New York Times , NWF President and CEO Collin O’Mara called for a Conservation Corps program to offer employment opportunities to 7.7 million young people who are out of work. Private sector business can do the same thing by creating conservation corps jobs to train existing, furloughed or future workers to carry out restoration and habitat management on corporate lands. Operational budgets will be tight for the foreseeable future, but diverting dollars from non-essential land management activities into more ecological projects that provide workers with new, green skills can have a profound impact on careers in transition.
Adopt nature-based solutions for pollution control – Emerging evidence points to polluted air as being an efficient carrier of microbes and the COVID-19 virus. Nature-based solutions in the form of urban and community forestry have been shown to be an effective barrier to airborne particulate matter. In areas of heavy industry where pollution particles move from the factory site into communities, forestry presents a solution that will have multiple co-benefits for employees and community members.
At the highest levels, the private sector can commit to the post-2020 biodiversity framework and its vision that “by 2050, biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for all people.” An important part of this framework will be to mainstream nature across all industry sectors because without nature, business is not resilient.
The Business for Nature Coalition, of which WHC is a member, is outlining the case for nature as a key element in business resiliency, with a major global leadership event on June 15 that will bring together inspiring business and world leaders to explore why making nature part of decision-making is critical to becoming a future-fit business. This meeting is an unmissable opportunity for business leaders and executives, policy makers and anyone with a stake in nature to participate in a high-level, interactive discussion on the imperative to “act now to reverse nature loss throughout this decade, giving all aspects of society the chance to become more resilient and to thrive within, not beyond, nature’s limits.” (You can register here.)
The bottom line is that nature has given us an opportunity to reset our relationship with it, and it would be foolish and myopic to ignore the chance to build back with nature for a resilient future.
https://tandemglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/IMG_2584-scaled-e1691083884555.jpg500800Margaret O’Gormanhttps://tandemglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/tandem-global-logo-exp.svgMargaret O’Gorman2020-06-02 08:00:402023-08-03 13:31:32What’s next for nature?
The beginning of the year has been full of news about business and the health of our planet. In January, Blackrock chairman Larry Fink released his annual letter to CEOs that doubled down on his earlier exhortations for business to start considering its impacts and risk in a world with a rapidly changing climate. With an opening statement like “Climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects,” readers are left with little doubt as to why Blackrock is seeking to reshape global finance. Just a few days later, Microsoft made a corporate commitment that caused other companies to pay attention: It would be carbon negative by 2030 and remove all of its historic carbon by 2050.
The biodiversity crisis has also seen high-level engagement early this year. “The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual Global Risk Report listed biodiversity loss in the top 5 risks of likelihood and impact. This is significant not only because for the first time the top 5 risks for likelihood were all nature-related, but that biodiversity loss has rapidly ascended from an area of possible concern in 2005 to a much greater risk today. When WEF gathered world leaders in Davos for the annual gabfest about global concerns, nature was a theme and environmental activists were given more prominence than ever before. At the intersection of climate and biodiversity, we saw the emergence of the Trillion Tree campaign funded by Salesforce founder and environmental philanthropist Marc Benioff. Even the usually environmentally unfriendly Trump administration got in on the act, pledging to participate in this goal.
Now that the dust has settled from this explosive start to what is being billed as a super year for nature, where do we stand? Has anything changed? Amid the promises, the speeches, the platforms and the predictable backlash, what in all of these proposals has meaning for nature and the biodiversity crisis that threatens so many species, populations and livelihoods across the world?
Larry Fink’s CEO letter is a great starting point for a fundamental rethink of the ability for private finance to reduce impacts and address climate change, but the focus for transformation was only on climate—biodiversity, wildlife, habitat and nature were not mentioned. This is a strange omission given the WEF global risk assessment of biodiversity loss mentioned above and the trend upward in risk. Indeed, the WEF put a dollar value of $30 billion globally on biodiversity risk in 2010, but a more recent study by the World Wildlife Fund finds that the loss of nature (and the services it provides) will wipe $479 billion a year off global economic growth by 2050, impacting the U.S. economy to the tune of over $60 billion a year.
The Trillion Tree campaign captures the imagination and is an easy campaign to support. However, the devil is in the details. Certain reforestation efforts can lead to negative results for biodiversity if fast-growing monocultures are incentivized over wild, native and diverse woodlands, especially since biodiverse forests have a greater capacity for carbon capture than plantation-style forests.
While the biodiversity crisis is gaining traction in the private sector a big disparity still exists between knowledge and action on climate and knowledge and action on biodiversity. Executives making decisions around the private sector’s future relationships with the planet know more about the SDGs and the IPCC than the Aichi Targets and IPBES. They’ve no familiarity with the Convention on Biological Diversity, and while they can talk knowledgeably about greenhouse gas reduction, they fare less well when considering ecosystem collapse, usually conflating the plight of the European honeybee, considered livestock in the U.S., with the global (and more existential) collapse of native insect populations.
They are not the only ones. In the U.S., the leading candidates in the democratic nomination race fail to mention wildlife or biodiversity at all, with Elizabeth Warren the only candidate who mentions nature in her plan for public lands protection. When our leaders in both private and public sectors do not see the threat to our future from the loss of biodiversity, inaction or injurious action will result. Microsoft’s detailed explanation of its goal to go carbon negative contains no mention of avoiding damage to nature in its seven guiding principles, and the details of its ambition points to investments in technological solutions for carbon capture that may include approaches that have negative impacts on nature. While Microsoft does declare intent to continue to invest in offsets where many of the nature-based solutions to climate reside, there is no detail around how these investments will be designed, decided or governed.
A core tenet of the environmental education movement is that an environmentally literate populace is necessary to advance and support laws, regulations and actions for a healthy planet. Today this literacy is not just required for K-12 learners, but increasingly for our leaders who are making big decisions for the future of our planet without due consideration of nature and the current trajectory of species loss
Recently the mayor of Bristol, UK declared an ecological emergency over the loss of wildlife. It was also the first city in the UK to declare a climate emergency two years ago. While encouraging, one data point does not make a trend. It is now up to other leaders to recognize biodiversity loss as the crisis it is and take action from the C-Suite to the factory floor. When that happens, then we can declare that 2020 was indeed a super year for nature.
Here are three ways that corporate leaders can act for biodiversity:
Adopt the Business of Nature solutions approach to work through own operations and value chains, lead landscape level collaboration, drive systemic change through their business models and recommend and promote policy changes
Support the efforts of the Convention on Biological Diversity as it develops its Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework that seeks all sectors’ involvement in putting “biodiversity on the path to recovery.”
Margaret O’Gorman is the author of Strategic Corporate Conservation Planning: A Guide to Meaningful Engagement, which offers fresh insights for corporations and environmental groups looking to create mutually-beneficial partnerships that use conservation action to address business challenges and realize meaningful environmental outcomes.
https://tandemglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/LS_Blueberry-High-Point-State-Park-NJ_AdobeStock_121071103-e1691068999458.jpeg500800Margaret O’Gormanhttps://tandemglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/tandem-global-logo-exp.svgMargaret O’Gorman2020-02-26 07:46:512023-08-03 09:23:32Can the Private Sector Make it a Super Year for Nature?
This blog post is a transcript of Margaret O’Gorman’s speech given at Conservation Conference 2019 in Baltimore, Maryland.
I would like to welcome you all here today for our annual Conservation Conference and because it’s the week before Thanksgiving, I’d like to offer thanks for everything you do to make this world a better place. Today and tomorrow we’re celebrating corporate conservation programs that are making the world a better place.
Because the world needs these programs very badly at the moment. This year has been a challenging year to live on our planet. It’s been unpredictable with economic reports pointing upwards, downwards and sideways, keeping us on the brink of a recession where the anticipation may be causing as much damage as the final crash will. It’s been unrelenting in the bad news from the reports by first the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that showed we are on trend to warm the planet by 1.5o C as early as 2030 and then the Intergovernmental Panel and Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)that told us that “the average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20%, mostly since 1900.” The work of the IPBES got biodiversity on the front pages for the first time in decades. We’ve read stories about record numbers of birds in north America absent from our skies, we’ve seen forest fires impacting large parts of the Amazon Rain Forest – the very lungs of our planet – and we’ve heard about record melting in the Arctic and are now experiencing unprecedented bush fires in Australia where an early and aggressive fire season is threatening homes and prime koala habitat where an estimated 50% of koalas there may have been lost. We’ve seen school strikes, climate protests and unrest on every continent. To top it all off, we witness the daily adolescent squabbling of our elected leaders who seem intent to put Nero to shame and not just fiddle but fight while Rome burns.
Earlier this year, I was invited to speak at Ireland’s National Biodiversity Forum that gathered a who’s who of nature-professionals together for two days of conversation and planning. The president of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins opened the conference. In his speech he bemoaned the lack of progress on environmental issues since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, saying “we don’t need any more reports to let us know the state we’re in. If we were coalminers, we’d be up to our knees in dead canaries by now.” View the full speech.
Sitting in the audience at the Forum, listening to the applause that followed this metaphor, I was also thinking how apt his metaphor was to business. President Higgins’ statement connected some dots in my head and led me from canaries in coal mines to the extensive risk assessments you all do on a regular basis. Canaries, as you all surely know, were used as an early detection system in coal mines, their deaths alerting miners to the presence of methane and carbon monoxide. If you think about it, canaries were tools of risk mitigation in the industrial revolution, a tool that lasted until the mid-1980s. President Higgins’ speech made me think about corporate risk assessment and the environment and how risks like – yes – methane and carbon monoxide but also financial markets and government regulations, cybersecurity and workforce development, and disruptive businesses and outdated technology remain front and center in corporate risk planning whereas risks from climate change and biodiversity – invisible like methane and carbon monoxide – remain under-assessed and undervalued.
And it’s not just me saying that. The CDP – formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project – has found a significant blind spot in corporate climate risk assessment. In a report earlier this year, it found that only 53% of the companies that reported into CDP identified inherent climate-related risk. It found that the private sector’s total reported risk from climate is severely undervalued. In fact, over 1,000 companies in the manufacturing sector alone identified not a single risk from climate and those that did focused more on narrow risks of government policy and regulations and shifting consumer patterns but very little risk was identified around infrastructure and supply chain, especially around resilience to the storms that are becoming more violent and less predictable, and to the fires and flooding that are becoming more common, almost predictable but no less damaging, with our changing climate. Looking west to California and PGE’s actions shows clearly that manifold risks exist in our changing, warming planet.
And that’s just climate risk. The risks associated with the biodiversity crisis are rarely addressed by the corporate world. And it’s not just the corporate world; the biodiversity crisis is the global issue nobody is talking about. The loss of nature has hardly been assessed at all.
It upsets me to my core that the biodiversity crisis remains so invisible. It is as threatening to our health and well-being as the climate crisis. But we’re just not talking about it. A study last year found that the climate crisis gets 8 times more coverage in the news media than the biodiversity crisis even though both issues generate the same number of reports and research studies.
This absence in attention shows. Every company we work with is deeply and impressively engaged in addressing their contribution to climate change, looking not just at the carbon footprint of the products they produce but also on the carbon footprint of the materials and processes they use to produce them and the carbon footprint of how their customers use them. They have parsed their carbon emissions into scopes 1, their direct emissions scope 2, the emissions made from the provider of their electricity and, their scope 3 emissions resulting from ingredients, distribution and the use of the product by the consumer. Having scope 3 emissions allows a company to assess the impact and identify opportunities for impact mitigation beyond its own operations.
But, do we do the same for biodiversity? No.
Ask a manufacturing company about their biodiversity impacts – it’s not material, they will say.
Ask a retail company about their biodiversity impacts – it’s not material, they will say.
Ask a tech company, a financial institution, a real estate developer, a road builder or an airline about their biodiversity impacts – it’s not material.
Yet, everything we eat, drink, wear, drive, work with, play with and dispose of has an impact on biodiversity. From the mines where we extract metals and sands – at least these industries accept a material impact – to the farms where we grow our food, through the factories, distribution routes, energy grids, stores and homes – through every act of consumption we are impacting biodiversity. So why do we limit our concern for biodiversity to direct impacts yet expand our carbon concern across the entire chain?
We need a scope 3 emissions approach for biodiversity. We need to consider nature across the entire system. We need to do that not just because nature is us, we need to do it because just like with climate change, the risks to society and business from the biodiversity crisis are significant but they are also in many ways unmeasurable and unpredictable. We can identify the risk to our food systems from the collapse of pollinator populations; the risk to our health from the collapse of air cleansing forests; the risks to our water quality from loss of marshes and bogs; and the risks to our wallets from having to pay for services that ecosystems give us for “free” today. But we can’t identify all the risks that may arise when a balanced system is pushed out of kilter.
We need to bring biodiversity to the fore, we need to talk about the issue and we need to value it more. We need to invest in solutions that work and the great thing about biodiversity, about recovering nature is that we know the solutions. We here are all engaged in that solution but we need to do more and invest more in nature.
We did an exercise recently. Kurt Eder, who works in our accounting department, calculated the total market capitalization of the membership of WHC. His analysis found that the market capitalization of all the companies that engage with WHC to implement conservation action on their lands is 3.3 trillion dollars. And do you know what these companies spend on biodiversity through their investments with WHC? 0.0001%. I know these companies are making investments in biodiversity elsewhere through regulated remediation and reclamation efforts, through philanthropic contributions of land or money, through in-kind contributions of employee hours for stream and beach clean-ups. But, do me a favor. Put your hand up if you think your company should allocate more resources for conservation and their WHC programs.
I worry a lot about these numbers but also about a world without nature’s brilliant and boisterous diversity. A world muted by loss, discolored into grey and dominated by a few adaptable species including ourselves.
And this 6th great extinction is not just an extinction event. Extinction is when a species disappears from the earth completely, when no individuals remain to breed new individuals and no larger populations exist to support them. Extinction is forever. Once a species is gone, it is not coming back and the millions of years of genetic history contained within it are lost forever. Extinctions diminish species’ richness. But biodiversity loss also affects species abundance, the number of individuals of a specific species that exist. Species abundance, even of common species, is also under threat from the biodiversity crisis. The diversity of life on our planet brings so much to our lives – our shelter, food, fiber and fuel. The services it brings are worth US$125 trillion a year. But nature also provides us with cultural richness, the bird song we hear at dawn and dusk, the changing colors of leaves in a woodland, the sight of an elk moving across a wild and lonely place, a whale breaching, a cricket singing. Biodiversity is experienced by sight and by sound – the color and noise that is part of our planet. And as its loss continues and accelerates, colors and sounds will be extinguished one by one from our world – our lived experiences in nature will become monochrome and mute.
I want you to listen to this soundscape and imagine for a moment you are in the amazon rain forest…you can hear a cacophony of sound around you but suddenly, one by one the sounds begin to disappear, to be lost…forever…listen and imagine…and with the sound of a lonely stream as our only company in nature, we can sense how poor our lives become without nature, without biodiversity…poor and somewhat spooky …we may not know it in our risk disclosures but we do know it deep in our hearts and our souls that biodiversity loss is actually a very material issue.
But there is room for optimism. Global interest in the environment is high. A survey by the Pew Research Center found that 74% of Americans said the country should do what it takes to protect the environment. The latest Eurobarometer measure of concerns of European citizens saw anxiety for the environment rise to be the 4th issue of most concern out of 13 issues. Even the World Economic Forum understands. This year it listed biodiversity loss in its Global Risks Report as having an above average likelihood of occurring and causing an above average impact on the global economy.
So, there is growing interest and next year, 2020, has a lot riding on its young shoulders including an expectation that it be a super year for nature. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will be having a high-profile meeting to agree on its post-2020 agenda and will, for the first time, officially embrace the idea of mainstreaming biodiversity into the industries represented here, making room for industry to have a positive impact. Next year is the 50th year of Earth Day and to kick it off this year, we are pleased to welcome the venerable Smithsonian Institute Earth Optimism panel to our conference. Earth Optimismis designed to showcase what is possible, what can work and what is being done across the planet, and the Smithsonian will be hosting a summit on Earth Optimism in conjunction with Earth Day’s 50th birthday next year. We’ll also be getting in on the celebrations and will be launching, early next year, an Earth Day challenge to our members.
It’s great to see that trees are having a moment. Entire countries like Ethiopia commit to, and carry out, ambitious reforestation goals for climate and biodiversity benefits and our ability to measure the impacts of every tree we plant from the carbon it will sequester to the stormwater it will absorb helping drive action most recently with our efforts with the Port of Indiana .
Nature-based solutions are coming into their own and are acknowledged to have the potential to contribute 1/3 of the solution to the climate problem and provide untold co-benefits for biodiversity. To support this effort and thanks to generous funding from Arcelor Mittal, we launched Climate Action Works earlier this year to bridge a significant gap between the private sector’s action on carbon and the potential for their own lands to play a meaningful role in both climate mitigation and adaptation.
Let’s hope all these things will cause a contagion of interest because concern for biodiversity can be infectious although our politicians do seem to be immune!
At WHC we have some metrics that clearly show an interest in what we are doing and value in our efforts to connect you to nature in a meaningful way. We see increasing interest in our programs and publications.Who has attended a WHC webinar this year?Since the first educational webinar launched in 2012, we’ve provided nature-based learning to over 12,000 people and last year we offered 23 webinars with 600 people viewing the excellent webinar on native bees.
If you attended a webinar and as you are attending Conference, you are a beneficiary of the hard work and the inspired contributions of Thelma Redick, our Sr. Director for Conservation Content and Partnerships. This is Thelma’s last conference with us. She is taking a career break to tend her garden and get active in her community. Thelma has poured her heart and soul as well as a fair amount of blood, sweat and tears into WHC over 17 years and is leaving a wonderful legacy of engagement, education and partnerships. Please join me in a round of applause to thank and honor Thelma.
Your great work is helping make biodiversity material. WHC members from companies both large and small engage in nature, through conservation action, species management and ecological restoration efforts in many different and interesting ways. These ways need to be scaled. They need to be replicated. They need to be better funded. The strategies and initiatives need to be mainstreamed into your planning and doing but they also need to be celebrated.For example, this year we entered into some great engagements with member companies – with Toyota North America on an exciting project to help their facilities identify indicator species for their 2050 “living in harmony with nature” goals, and with Chemours, Kinder Morgan, Waste Management and CEMEX to develop tools to educate and engage facilities on meaningful stewardship efforts. We are shepherding Lafarge Canada and Peugeot through corporate disruptions to leverage existing efforts to create a conservation cultures.We are helping Fiat Chrysler America (FCA) to not only meet but exceed their Community Benefits obligations associated with their plant expansion on the east side of Detroit. Greg Rose from FCA is determined to bring nature back to this part of the city. This effort dovetails nicely with our DTE Energy-funded program to engage more companies in more community efforts in the region. We continue to engage with the Suppliers Partnership for the Environment, supporting the most popular initiative in the partnership – pollinator gardens at suppliers’ facilities.
We don’t just celebrate your work here at Conference. We celebrate your work to audiences across the world telling your story in Mexico, Ireland and elsewhere. We spoke to a lot of people this year – we spoke to lawyers and engineers, school children and academics, conservationists and chemists. We’ve talked to the energy sector, to EHS professionals, to arborists and pollinator protectors. We’ve told your stories and exhorted others to follow your lead.
And we were published this year.
Published in scientific journal Environment, Development and Sustainability a paper by ExxonMobil’s Alex Ireland and Laura Napoli coauthored with WHC staffer Emily Volstad, found that corporate conservation efforts have the potential to provide conservation benefits that are comparable to some financially incentivized programs.
In the proceedings of the ROW 12th International Symposium WHC staff Josiane Bonneau and Sydney Muchapublished a paper to guide Rights of Way managers to incorporate climate change adaptation strategies into their veg management practices.
And of course, we published our wonderful calendar – the cover is one of my favorites ever and a big thank you to all who contributed the color and beauty of nature to this publication including FCA for sponsoring this great cover picture.
And I wrote and published a book…why you might ask? Indeed I asked myself that same question quite a few times but I wrote this book for a number of reasons. I wrote this book out of frustration, out of pride, out of necessity but mostly out of hope.I wrote this book out of frustration that too many companies don’t know the potential of their lands to make a positive difference for biodiversity and climate and too many NGOs see companies as potential funders, not partners. I wrote the book out of pride for WHC and the thousands of corporate employees, who for three decades have been achieving significant outcomes for biodiversity through a unique model of strategic engagement and recognition that was developed through trial and error, over economic booms and busts and where experience is informed by action and not theory.I wrote this book out of necessity. Only 15% of lands worldwide are protected for nature so all lands are needed to address this issue especially privately owned corporate lands that are not being used for operations but also not being managed for biodiversity.
I wrote this book out of hope – we have to continue to work, to plant, to restore and to manage our lands for nature and we – you – have the lands to do it with. Nature is amazing. It is resilient. It is responsive. It is smarter than we are and when we give it a kick start and get out of the way, the results can be absolutely magical. This is the hope that I poured into this book – marry the pragmatism of corporate needs with the magic of nature and create an outcome that benefits us all.We are thrilled, with the generous support of CEMEX… to be able to present copies of the book to everyone in attendance today and I am happy to sign anyone’s book – in the exhibit hall after this speech.
But I couldn’t have written this book without you, the plans you make, the strategies you develop and the programs you do. The book is a celebration of everyone in this room who takes an idea, convenes a team, moves some earth, plant some seeds and makes this world a better place and if anyone in this room ever thinks about writing a book, please consider working with Island Press, they’re just a great bunch of people working hard to get books on nature and community out into the world.
But not before you enjoy and engage with Conference over the next two days. This Conference is for you. It is designed to celebrate success, share strategies and recognize exceptional efforts. This year we will be presenting project awards for outstanding efforts across 18 themes. We will also be presenting an award to the best Gold Program, the best effort at employee engagement and a corporate award for conservation leadership. These awards are always competitive, and this year was no different. It’s not easy to be nominated so let’s celebrate that. Let’s have a round of applause for all the projects and programs nominated for awards this year.
We have great content this year at Conference with a NASA astronaut Ricky Arnold who will be joining 47 other speakers for 12 hours of learning over the next two days. In addition we have 6 hours of networking and 5 hours of recognition time. We have 43 exhibitors in the hall outside ranging from WHC member companies to our educational partners Project Wet, Project Wild and Project Learning Tree. All this information is in the Conference app so make sure you download it. Thank you to all the speakers, exhibitors and sponsors that made our Conference possible this year. Can we have a little round of applause for the many groups and individuals that made today and tomorrow possible?
This year, as many of you know, we did a much-needed update to our certification application platform to respond to our needs for a robust reviewer management system but most importantly your needs for data for your reporting and a cleaner interface. Just like with most technology buys, this did not go as smoothly as we wanted and we found ourselves launching later than we wanted to which impacted your ability to submit applications according to your timelines. I am so sorry that that happened to you this year and hope that we will never have to buy new technology ever again.But thanks to this investment, we will be building out the reporting aspect of the platform throughout next year and anticipate having some great reports that can help you whether you need to data for ISO verification, GRI reporting or internal communications to leadership. This entire build has been a challenge – try buying the right technology at a price an NGO can afford but Emily and Caitlin and the rest of the team are poised to wring every last drop of functionality from this system to support your needs.
Despite all the software shenanigans and thanks to you, Emily and her team received 235 program applications made up of 889 project applications. We welcomed Aristeo as a company with a first-time certification for their pollinator garden – Aristeo is a full service construction company based in Michigan. We welcome them to the fold.
This year a team of 41 individual reviewers looked at your applications – these are the people who evaluate if your conservation objectives are sound, your monitoring is acceptable and the answers to the questions are understandable. They assign the score to your project and the tier or recognition. This year 64 Silver and 44 Gold Programs were recognized as exceeding minimum requirements and being exceptional. Thanks to you, we now have 700 certified programs in 28 countries, 49 US states/territories and we welcomed a new country, Latvia, into the fold this year with a certification at CEMEX’s – Caunes Quarry.
Applications for avian projects continue to be the most common projects received. 385 avian projects were submitted this year. The most common habitat projects are on grassland habitat and the most common education are in Awareness and Community Engagement – underlining one of the unique and important aspects of Conservation Certification, the human dimension that connects employees and communities around acts of conservation that matter.
And as you know all acts of conservation matter because our natural world matters. Just think about it. Think about a butterfly. It seems too slight, so flimsy. It weighs 1/10 that of a dime. I recently read about a monarch that was tagged in Canada and re-sighted in Mexico 60 days later. It had flown nearly 2500 miles over that time. Think about a frog. They seem so fragile yet they are found in some of the harshest ecoregions on our planet from the Arctic Circle to the rain forests and everywhere in between. The frogs that live in cold and temperate climates hibernate in water, surviving on breathing oxygen from the mud they bury into and allowing nonessential organs to freeze while maintaining blood flow by having antifreeze in their veins.
Think about trees. They seem so solitary yet they are in constant contact with other trees, communicating and sharing resources through a vast underground network of mycorrhizal fungi where a mother tree is connected to all other trees in a forest and manages water and nutrients. Think about nature and its amazingness, its resilience and its capacity to adapt and to recover. And adapt and recover it must.
While extinction itself is a one-way street, loss of species abundance is not. When I first started working on rare and imperiled species, I did it in New Jersey where in the late 1980s, there remained one pair of bald eagles in the state, historically low populations of osprey and other species like the Pine Barrens tree frog and eastern tiger salamander were all at serious risk of extinction. Today New Jersey has 238 pairs of bald eagles and historically high numbers of ospreys. The Pine Barrens tree frog and eastern tiger salamander are slowing gaining ground. Recovery is possible. Restoration of biodiversity is possible. We can turn the corner for many species by combining regulations like the ESA, species management by wildlife biologists and volunteers and lands management – helping habitat do its thing and provide for species breeding, migrating and hibernating needs. We can make a positive difference and I have a second soundscape that proves it. This soundscape contains the species that we have recovered – the bald eagle, peregrine falcon, osprey and whooping crane, all species brought back from the brink and in the background, the countless crickets and frogs that we keep our eye in to ensure that their abundance never declines to critical levels. Listen to this soundscape and imagine it as being secure for you when you’re sitting on your porch in old age and retirement but also when you grand kids and their grand kids are sitting on their porches in old age and retirement. It’s a legacy we can leave if we consider nature, mainstream biodiversity and look at all of our lands as having potential for nature-based efforts.
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But you’re not sitting on your porch in retirement. You’re still active and we all have work to do. My call to action to you is a simple one – let’s make biodiversity material across all aspects of your company. Consider nature – consider where you sit in your company or your community. Where are the intersections? What division are you in, what department, what ties do you have to different parts of the company or even to different companies, what budget do you control? I want you all to reach across your own professional fence lines and engage someone else in biodiversity action whether a colleague, a vendor, a peer or a competitor. If you operate in facilities management, reach out to a colleague in remediation. If you’re engaged through sustainability, connect with someone in HR. Infect the finance people with a love of nature. If you’re a member of a trade association representing your industry, introduce biodiversity at the next meeting. Let’s make nature material, let’s make biodiversity matter.
In the book, I end with a vision of how the world could look if business fully integrated nature, if business mainstreamed biodiversity and designed its very existence to live in true harmony with nature. I say I like to imagine a future journey along the urban/rural transectfrom densely populated cities through suburban towns to sparsely populated countryside and wilderness. Along this journey, industry’s impact is no longer seen as one of dominance over nature but instead as a comprehensively designed integration with nature. In this future, the anonymous offices in central business districts sport green walls and green roofs that provide habitat for pollinators, birds, and other species dwelling in the city or just passing through.Buildings are darkened at night as a matter of course to protect migratory species. Urban industrial areas are managing their buffer lands for biodiversity. Suburban office parks are meadows, corporate campuses are forests, and smaller corporate locations such asgas stations, shopping malls, and shipping depots manage for nature not purely for aesthetics but also for ecological functionality. When the journey ends in rural or wilderness areas, the impact of industry on the landscape has a bigger footprint in mines and quarries. But in this greener future, the old scars on the land are no longer visible, thanks to ecological remediation and dynamic reclamation, while current operations integrate nature in new and innovative ways. This future can be realized if corporate landowners and conservation partners take the time to plan and build programs that will bring long-term benefit to business, biodiversity, and community.
Here in this room are the planners and the builders and the people who can mainstream nature into corporate land holdings across the planet. When we do that, when we succeed to create that new landscape, we can sit our porches, listen to the sounds of nature and be proud of the role we played.
Thank you.
https://tandemglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Wildlife-Habitat-Council_2019_Press_Release_001-scaled.jpg13662048Margaret O’Gormanhttps://tandemglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/tandem-global-logo-exp.svgMargaret O’Gorman2019-11-25 19:10:002023-08-03 09:26:52State of Corporate Conservation 2019: Make Biodiversity Material
When the international conservation groups IUCN, The Nature Conservancy and others launched the Nature4Climate communications initiative in 2018, they stamped approval on the notion that nature has a significant role in addressing climate change in both mitigation (reducing carbon) and adaptation (increasing resilience) initiatives. Nature4Climate declares that nature-based action is the forgotten solution; nature can deliver 30% of the climate solutions needed by 2030, but is currently less than 1% of the conversation and receives less than 3% of climate funding.
Why the disparity?
Journalist, environmental activist and rewilding proponent George Monbiot helps explain why in an essay published in April of this year. He states that we cannot rely only on emissions reductions to reach the best-case scenario goal of limiting global warming to 1.5o Celsius, so we must also seek to draw down carbon already in the atmosphere through Negative Emissions Strategies. The common solutions proposed for Negative Emissions Strategies (Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage [BECCS] and Direct Air Capture) are currently unrealistic at scale and threaten serious maladaptive consequences to water, biodiversity and communities. Nature-based climate solutions present the best and the most cost-effective option for carbon capture. Nature-based climate solutions initiated for carbon capture can have co-benefits for biodiversity, which is facing its own crisis driven in part by climate change but also by many other factors including habitat destruction and fragmentation for industrial-scale agriculture and other uses, black market trade, and invasive species and disease.
Nature-based climate solutions can also contribute to climate adaptation strategies that focus on securing life and quality of life within a shifting and unpredictable new climate. Adaptation efforts deal with sea level rise, storm surges and coastal protection; increased wildfires from dryer and hotter climates; species range shifts through fragmented habitats; and impacts on human populations from increasingly violent storms, lost harvests or disease. Building resilience to climate through nature-based solutions is therefore a cost-effective approach. The Global Center on Adaptation views ecosystem-based adaptation efforts like restoring deltas to prevent flooding as key to achieving community resilience worldwide. Like nature-based mitigation efforts, nature-based adaptation efforts can produce beneficial outcomes for biodiversity.
While much of the policy efforts around mitigation and adaptation are being driven by nation states and sub-national entities, the corporate landscape is full of initiatives and commitments to address climate change. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), the Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosure (TFCD), RE100, REDD+ and others are engaging the corporate world in climate mitigation and adaptation. Companies themselves are fully engaged in transitioning to carbon-neutral or carbon-free business models, posting ambitious goals captured by yet another initiative, Science Based Targets, that has found 551 companies taking science-based climate action.
However, in most corporate mitigation and adaptation efforts, nature is absent. The majority of private sector action on climate is aimed at reducing carbon emissions from their operations and products. Energy companies seek to transition toward low-carbon or no-carbon sources for electricity. Manufacturing companies look for ways to make their products in less carbon-intensive ways with different materials and advanced technologies, while services companies work to reduce the energy consumption at their facilities and offset the carbon impact of their work-related travel.
Recently, Shell made a splash by announcing that part of its climate strategy is to invest $300 million in nature over the next three years with projects in the Netherlands, Spain, Australia and Malaysia. It’s a great investment and will encourage other companies to take similar action. The work being funded is essentially an offset. What if Shell, or any other company considering offsets first looked at its own lands through the climate/nature lens? What if Shell, or indeed any company, mandated nature-first, climate-smart management? There is a big hole in corporate climate action that nature-based approaches can fill with cost-effective solutions that bring copious co-benefits.
Twenty nature-based conservation, restoration and improved land management actions have been identified to have the most significant impact on carbon storage or avoided emissions. These and other actions can have significant impact on climate adaptation, and most of these actions can be taken by the private sector on the lands they own or operate. Nature-based actions for carbon reduction are generally grouped around forests, grasslands and wetlands, with reforestation providing the biggest carbon impact and the most co-benefits for biodiversity, air, water and soil. Nature-based actions for adaptation can consist of green infrastructure investments to address climate-driven environmental management problems, ecological restoration to enhance existing ecosystem services and land management that supports the need for species movement to adapt to climate-driven range changes.
The following represent a small selection of actions that companies can take:
Prioritize reforestation on surplus properties and remediation or reclamation sites; register the project with a carbon registry so it can contribute to the company’s own carbon accounting.
Implement vegetation management practices that prioritize grasslands; ensure that all BMPs for land management are climate friendly.
Manage urban or fragmented habitats to increase connectivity by providing stepping stone habitat for climate-driven species movement.
Consider all corporate lands through the climate lens and design practices that can address the issue, such as: transforming lawns on corporate campuses into meadows; protecting and restoring wetlands and especially peatlands; building natural strength into shorelines; implementing practices that restore soil health; and enhancing connectivity within and across fence-lines.
The cherry on the top of nature-based climate action is the impact on the human psyche. Many people feel a sense of hopelessness in the drumbeat of dire warnings around climate change and in the inability to do anything beyond protesting and taking small, individual actions. Providing opportunities for action for employees and community members through nature-based solutions can create a sense of positive purpose and accomplishment. In the book Biodiversity and Climate Change, editor Tom Lovejoy likens ecological restoration efforts for climate change to the victory gardens of World War II that addressed both the problem of food shortages and the psychology of the people on the home-front. Corporate lands, both large and small, can today become the victory gardens for climate.
There is a global biodiversity crisis. We know this from the IPBES report published earlier this year and the updated IUCN Red List published this week. These reports lay it out in stark terms – millions of species edging towards extinction. For many in the U.S., this crisis can sometimes seem distant, happening in faraway rain forests and the deepest oceans. But it’s happening right here in the U.S., where 12,000 animal species are currently considered in need of conservation action. Iconic creatures like the whooping crane and the Florida panther are among those U.S.-based species listed as endangered.
So why don’t we easily connect to the “global biodiversity crisis”? In the U.S., ‘biodiversity’ is not a term we usually use to describe the natural world. It’s ironic that we shy away from it since it is a term first suggested by a trio of Americans. Tom Lovejoy, E.O. Wilson and Walter G. Rosen of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) are all credited with promoting the idea of the diversity of life and coining the term ‘biodiversity’. In the U.S. we talk instead about ‘wildlife,’ ‘nature’ and ‘habitat,’ and we focus on individual species whether regulated game species, listed species or other species of concern. We do this because ‘conservation’ practice follows policy and it follows the funding.
In the U.S. there are a variety of funding sources for wildlife conservation. These sources are levies on sales of hunting and fishing equipment, and from appropriated federal and state funds to support recovery of listed species and management of others. Despite the variety of funding sources, there remains a distressing deficiency between what is available and what is needed to support and secure America’s wildlife, aka biodiversity.
Less than 1% of the federal budget is currently allocated to nature-based efforts across many agencies at both the federal and state levels. For wildlife efforts, the majority of spending happens at the state levels, supported by the levies and through the State Wildlife Grant Program, which provides federal grant funds to state fish and wildlife agencies for programs that benefit wildlife and their habitats, including non-game species. Recent studies by the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies and others have shown a significant gap in funding that, if allowed to continue, will severely impact the future of 12,000 species of greatest conservation concern. We cannot allow this to happen.
America’s nature is non-political so a bipartisan solution (a rarity in these times of deep division) is being promoted in the form of the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act that was recently introduced to Congress. The Act seeks to dedicate $1.3 billion annually to state fish and wildlife agencies to implement their science-based wildlife action plans, and an additional $97.5 million for tribal fish and wildlife managers to conserve fish and wildlife on tribal lands and waters. If passed, this Act will represent a significant step towards addressing the global biodiversity crisis that will impact us all.
The Act will not just benefit nature. It will also benefit society including the private sector which seeks stability and predictability in which to do business and healthy environments for its employees to live, work and play. Healthy wildlife populations will reduce the number of newly-listed species and regulations on land use. Robust biodiversity will contribute to resilient natural communities that are needed to withstand uncommon weather patterns and other climate-driven events. Vibrant nature elevates communities and makes them truly great places to live. Everyone benefits from biodiversity so everyone should support it.
The Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies and the National Wildlife Federation are two of the driving forces for this piece of legislation. They are eager to bring private sector entities together in support of the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act to show that biodiversity is not just a political concern nor an environmental advocacy concern but a concern of everyone seeking a stable and healthy future.
For more information about the Act and how you can help, please contact Sean Saville at the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies.
From the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies: We have developed a new sign-on letter for business partners to demonstrate their support for the legislation and to send a strong signal to Congress that this proactive, non-regulatory approach to preventative fish and wildlife conservation funding is urgently needed. To conservation partners in the private sector and trade associations representing corporate members please take a minute to fill out the short sign-on form and add your business to the list of supporters. http://bit.ly/RAWABusinessLetter
The Global Assessment Summary Report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) splashed across newspaper and social media channels earlier this month. For some it was a shocking and depressing addition to the many IPCC climate reports that have been dominating the environmental news for years. For others it was an amplification of what we already knew from IUCN’s Red List, WWF’s Living Planet reports and the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) acknowledgement that it would not meet its Aichi Targets in 2020.
For decades, polite warnings about the state of our natural world have been ignored or downplayed in the media and by policy makers. The IPBES Report does away with the politeness and instead communicates the situation starkly and clearly in headline-making statements like “one million species at risk of extinction,” and “between $235 billion and $577 billion in annual global crop output is at risk from pollinator decline.” The report definitively states how consumption and land use patterns have created a grave unraveling of the web of life that, if left to unspool over the next two decades, will result in a grayer, poorer and more uncertain future for nature and the human species that depend on it.
One of the reasons for the devastating loss of species is land use that causes habitat destruction. Over one-third of the terrestrial land surface now being used for cropping or animal husbandry is managed with industrial yet nature-destroying efficiency. Pollution has altered our oceans, affecting at least 267 species, including 86% of marine turtles, 44% of seabirds and 43% of marine mammals. Overexploitation of natural resources is a driver that has decimated populations of fish, shellfish and other marine species.
Invasive species, enabled by the global movement of goods and people, is another driver for species loss, leaving one-fifth of the earth’s surface at risk of plant or animal invasions that can destroy native systems and overwhelm endemic, rare or specially-adapted species. Climate change exacerbates the already weakened web, bleaching coral reefs impacted by pollution, shrinking or moving species’ ranges in habitats fragmented by development and causing species interactions to be desynchronized as the timing of spring emergences and migratory arrivals becomes increasingly altered in different directions.
All sectors—government, private and the public-at-large—are implicated in this crisis. Governments have instituted policies that make it easy to ignore impacts on nature, the private sector has taken full advantage of said policies, and the public at large embraces the throw-away life of single-use plastics, fast fashion and easy access to unseasonal foods. All sectors have to address their own institutions, policies and practices if we are to repair the damage to the web of life that supports us all.
Industry is especially indicted in most aspects of the IPBES report. While we recognize that industry has created the prosperity and health that much of the world’s population enjoys today, it has also caused the habitat destruction, pollution and unsustainable land use driving extinctions of once common plant and animal species.
Industry has a major role to play in reversing the trend.
While there are many potential policy proposals at the intersection of the public and private sectors where government regulations, subsidies, financing and fines can affect the systematic change we need, there are also a number of pragmatic solutions that require neither government carrots nor sticks, but enlightened leadership with the capacity to see beyond the bottom line and the strength to act.
Materiality
First, more companies need consider biodiversity as a risk or materiality. In a recent study, fewer than one-third of the top 100 companies in the global Fortune 500 published biodiversity commitments in their external reporting, with only five companies listing specific, measurable and time-bound targets.
Across sectors, the extractive industries have for many years adopted strong biodiversity commitments driven by lenders, stakeholders and shareholders because of the direct impact they have on the biosphere. For mining companies, the regulations that have governed their investments and operations for many decades have made biodiversity a material issue. It’s now time for all companies to consider biodiversity as a materiality.
Everything made today impacts biodiversity.
Whether a product is taken directly from the ground as metal or rock, grown in the earth as food or fiber, processed somewhere along the value chain as a plastic, a chemical or a piece of clothing, biodiversity is impacted. The energy used, the transportation routes taken by both land and sea, the surface parking lots at the big box stores, and the landfills that receive our spent products all impact nature in one way or another.
With a crisis of this magnitude, companies, regardless of their product, should examine the full range of their own operations and suppliers for impacts on nature. The Suppliers Partnership for the Environment, a U.S.-based initiative to help the auto industry “green” its supply chain, leads by example. It has working groups on the expected topics like battery disposal, materials efficiency and water management, but it has also convened a biodiversity working group that allows industry leaders like Toyota, Fiat Chrysler, General Motors, Honda and Ford to push biodiversity action to their suppliers, capturing biodiversity attributes along the chain of a product and thereby making biodiversity material.
Mainstreaming
Mainstreaming as a concept has many definitions, but it basically means that biodiversity is considered across an entire enterprise or life cycle. It could mean designing remediation remedies with a nature-first focus; planning maintenance of non-operational land with biodiversity (not budget) as a driver; or developing BMPs that promote ecological stewardship on rights-of-way, buffer lands, test tracks or landfills.
When biodiversity becomes material, it is easier to mainstream into operations. The CBD has sought biodiversity mainstreaming for many years, but not until its Conference of Parties (COP14) last year, was mainstreaming for the mining, energy, manufacturing, processing and infrastructure sectors discussed for the first time among the delegates. This is small progress. We need more.
Mainstreaming biodiversity would see corporate conservation opportunities considered in capital projects as part of the initial design phase rather than an afterthought. Given the diversity of corporate land holdings across the world, adopting a corporate-wide mainstreaming approach could make a significant difference to ecosystems of all sorts. We have to consider land as having multiple uses and manage it for both nature and business needs.
Action
Materiality and mainstreaming are approaches that will only get us so far. They create a mindset and a framework for action, which is the ultimate objective. The IPBES discusses biodiversity as “Nature’s Contribution to People,” defining the concept as the many cultural, social, spiritual and financial ways biodiversity is important to people around the planet. This contribution makes biodiversity a local issue with local ownership.
Constantly framing biodiversity within government policy or as an item on a corporate balance sheets creates a sense of it being someone else’s problem. Understanding the local value of nature is key to driving human-scale action. Connecting a corporate acceptance of biodiversity as a materiality with an operational mandate of mainstreaming to strong local action is a needed to halt biodiversity losses and restore nature.
This crisis presents a real opportunity for the private sector to take action. As Andrew Winston wrote in his piece about the IPBES report, “I’ve always believed in business and its abilities to tackle big issues. But we need bravery to challenge the status quo now. What an amazing opportunity for real leaders to step up.”
These real leaders must emerge soon—nature doesn’t have the time to wait.
https://tandemglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/sea-turtles-1503461_1920-e1691069616414.jpg500800Margaret O’Gormanhttps://tandemglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/tandem-global-logo-exp.svgMargaret O’Gorman2019-05-16 07:06:582023-08-03 09:33:48The Alarm is Sounding for Nature. Who Will Take the Lead in Materiality, Mainstreaming and Action?
I didn’t realize when I packed my Echo Meter Touch 2 in my luggage that bats would play such an important part in my summer vacation. With just a couple of weeks in Berlin and a few days in Ireland, I thought I’d be lucky if I got a chance to use the bat acoustic detector at all. However, it is so small that it takes up very little room in my suitcase, making it easy to bring it along on my travels.
I also didn’t realize that the joy I took in wielding the acoustic monitor would rile a bat expert from the Netherlands and involve me in a discussion about the role of amateur citizen scientists in conservation, a discussion that was mirrored mere weeks later in the August issue of Nature magazine. In the article, the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is faulted for seeking to embrace more ”amateur” opinions in their assessment work.
Here’s what happened.
In Berlin we were staying in an apartment near the Volkspark Am Weinberg. The park is a gem of an urban park with children’s play areas, a rose garden that doubles as a beer garden, and a fabulous Swiss restaurant in the middle with decks overlooking a grassy expanse that rolled down toward a small pond over which a grey heron stood sentry. Every evening this grassy area was filled with Berliners enjoying the cool of the evening in the middle of a summer heatwave. This was the scene of my so-called crime: my amateur deployment of the Echo Meter Touch 2.
Whenever I have successful “sightings” of bats using the acoustic monitor, I like to post the results on my Twitter feed. I do this to raise awareness about the species around us, whether we are in pristine wilderness or an urban setting. I do it because a bat ”sighting” makes me happy. I do it to encourage others to participate in nocturnal wildlife watching. One of our passions at Wildlife Habitat Council is connecting non-experts to nature and seeing how increased knowledge and ease with the natural world becomes a contagious enthusiasm for conservation. I tweet to create a buzz.
No sooner had I posted my observations of a Kuhl’s pipistrelle and a common pipistrelle than a bat expert criticized the accuracy of the Echo Meter Touch 2 and dismissed the “layman” for having access to such technology and compromising the data collected by experts. He then took the manufacturer of the Echo Meter Touch 2 to task for not moving fast enough in refining their technology. In terms of exchanges in the wild world of Twitter, it was very mild, but it was also unnecessary and indicative of a strain of conservation snobbery that sees only the need to protect the purity of the science without acknowledging the larger picture.
It’s the same argument being made right now on the global stage, where the IPBES is being criticized for adopting an approach called “Nature’s Contribution to People” in their latest assessment efforts, which will involve non-traditional, non-professional and non-western approaches to measuring and valuing biodiversity. In explaining the approach, a delegate to a recent IPBES meeting in Bonn told Nature magazine, “Not everyone who knows about biodiversity or is a custodian of biodiversity is a scientist. We need to learn to listen to people even if they don’t have a PhD.” But not everyone agrees. Vehement argument to the contrary is coming from the economists of natural capital valuation schemes. Their views and approaches have been ascendant for decades, even though the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the primary funding mechanism for UN environment programs, has stated, “Valuation is not leading to the development of policy reforms needed to mitigate the drivers of biodiversity loss and encourage sustainable development through the better management of biodiversity and natural capital, nor is it triggering changes in the use and scale of public and private finance flows on the scale necessary to address threats.” In short, the GEF has concluded that valuation schemes are not the silver bullet for our current crisis.
My critic on Twitter, eco-economists and traditionalists at global conferences all have something in common: a disdain for non-professionals “meddling” in their respective ivory towers. For them, the message has not yet sunk in about the necessity of welcoming the contribution of the layman and understanding that embracing the human dimension can add so much more than the distribution curves and range maps, and that strength comes from having people push policy with science in a supporting role.
Fortunately for me, my second vacation deployment of the Echo Meter Touch 2 in a garden in a small town in Ireland was proof positive of the power of engagement. Three young girls aged 8, 10 and 11 ran wild in a twilit garden screaming “pipistrelle” at the tops of their lungs, having seen the acoustics of a common, soprano and Nathusias’ pipistrelle on the screen of my phone. I know they will add that experience to their collection of summer memories for the future. These girls are unlikely to grow up to be bat experts, but they will grow up to be bat aware.
While we always support and advocate for the PhDs, the professors and the experts, we should never forget to empower and embrace the amateurs, the innovators and the tinkerers. As we move into our Conservation Conference in November, which draws upon both the knowledge of experts and the experiences of laymen, we know that all approaches are needed to protect, restore and recover all species.
https://tandemglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/AdobeStock_220899036-scaled.jpeg13662048Margaret O’Gormanhttps://tandemglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/tandem-global-logo-exp.svgMargaret O’Gorman2018-09-26 09:00:212023-08-03 09:35:51What a Bat Monitor Can Teach Us About Inclusion
A recently published paper found that biodiversity received 8 times less media coverage than climate change in the mainstream media. This inequity in coverage reflects a trend that began around 2000 and has continued to increase every year since. Today, biodiversity is almost completely absent from the pages of our newspapers, websites or TV screens, apart from the occasional feel-good story about hawks breeding on city skyscrapers, ducklings being helped by traffic cops or the latest arrival at the local zoo.
There are many reasons put forward by the paper’s authors for the discrepancy in coverage, including the more telegenic nature of large-scale catastrophic events, the clear human impact of climate change, the global scale of the problem and the fact that the human role in climate change remains controversial, which in turn generates headlines.
Given these findings, it should come as no surprise that a recent report with significant news about the state of the world’s biodiversity has been largely underreported. In March, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) published its first global assessment of the state of nature since 2005. Regional assessments looking at Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe and Central Asia paint a grim picture of a variety of threats to biodiversity in different parts of the world and make predictions about the implications.
In Europe and Central Asia, the report found that wetlands have declined by 50% since the 1970s. Marine and coastal ecosystems, which can contribute up to 35% of GDP for some African countries, are under severe threat from development, climate change and urbanization. In the Americas, close to 24% of the 14,000 species assessed are considered at risk of extinction. In Asia and the Pacific, agrobiodiversity is in decline due to intensification, and with that decline, indigenous and local knowledge of ecosystems and biodiversity is being lost.
Considering these new assessments, the 20 Aichi Targets adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as part of their strategic plan suddenly seem increasingly unattainable by the goal date of 2020. The targets call for, among other things, halving the rate of habitat loss and bringing it close to zero by 2020, as well as preventing the extinction of known threatened species and improving the conservation status of all declining species by the same deadline. These assessments suggest that while some progress has been made towards the goals, the likelihood of them being achieved remains slim.
This important news was absent from the nightly news and the front pages of newspapers and news sites, but it was widely discussed in the international conservation community.
The Chair of IPBES, Robert Watson, called for immediate action at a level commensurate with the problem, which he declared to be as dangerous to humans as climate change. Jake Rice, a co-chair of the Americas assessment, called on everyone to make a “fundamental change in how we live as individuals, communities and corporations.”
Cristina Pașca Palmer, the Executive Secretary of the CBD and the UN’s top nature official, told The Guardian that our current rate of species loss is “mega-urgent.” She sees value in every attempt to reverse these dire trends and is pushing for all solutions to be considered and for efforts that include restoration and transformation to be counted toward securing nature, as well as the more traditional valuation, protection and restriction approaches. She understands that in both the developing and developed world, enough land cannot realistically be set aside to meet this goal. Instead she wants to broaden approaches to conservation beyond preservation and increase sustainable practices to reduce the impact on nature.
What Ms. Pașca Palmer is saying sounds like common sense, but it is quietly revolutionary. The international conservation community in which the CBD operates focuses almost exclusively on the hotspots for biodiversity—the wild and pristine places of the globe. In doing so, this focus creates a sense that nature is “over there” and not part of our everyday reality and experience of the planet.
When we read and hear these feel-good stories about ducks crossing the road, hawks breeding on city skyscrapers and the latest arrival at the local zoo, we are experiencing nature. When we engage in an effort to clean a park, we are restoring a habitat. When we plant milkweed for monarch butterflies, we are contributing to the conservation of a declining species. While we can support the preservation of wild and pristine places with our dollars and our votes, we can also better integrate nature into our lives with our own actions. We can help increase coverage of the issue by clicking on those stories online, by amplifying the messages across our social media, and by working to make #biodiversity a trending topic that receives the attention it truly deserves.
https://tandemglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/WL_Hawksbill-Turtle_Gulf-of-Mexico_AdobeStock_28724028-e1691069828155.jpeg500800Margaret O’Gormanhttps://tandemglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/tandem-global-logo-exp.svgMargaret O’Gorman2018-05-10 03:00:122023-08-03 09:37:19Big News About Biodiversity Makes Grim Predictions – Why Aren’t We Paying More Attention?
