Journal article
Using conservation science to advance corporate biodiversity accountability
- Abstract:
- Biodiversity declines threaten the sustainability of global economies and societies. Acknowledging this, businesses are beginning to make commitments to account for and mitigate their influence on biodiversity, and report this in sustainability reports. The top 100 of the 2016 Fortune 500 Global companies' (the Fortune 100) sustainability reports were assessed to gauge the current state of corporate biodiversity accountability. Many companies acknowledged biodiversity, but corporate biodiversity accountability is in its infancy. Almost half (49) of the Fortune 100 mentioned biodiversity in reports, and 31 made clear biodiversity commitments, of which only 5 could be considered specific, measureable and time‐bound. A variety of biodiversity‐related activities were disclosed (e.g., managing impacts, restoring biodiversity, and investing in biodiversity), but only 9 companies provided quantitative indicators to verify the magnitude of their activities (e.g., area of habitat restored). No companies reported quantitative biodiversity outcomes, making it difficult to determine whether business actions were of sufficient magnitude to address impacts, and are achieving positive outcomes for nature. Conservation science can help advance approaches to corporate biodiversity accountability through developing science‐based biodiversity commitments, meaningful indicators, and more targeted activities to address business impacts. With the “biodiversity policy super‐year” of 2020 rapidly approaching, now is the time for conservation scientists to engage with and support businesses to play a critical role in setting the new agenda for a sustainable future for the planet, with biodiversity at its heart.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.4MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1111/cobi.13190
Authors
+ Natural Environment Research Council
More from this funder
- Funding agency for:
- Addison, P
- Grant:
- NE/N005457/1
- Publisher:
- John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
- Journal:
- Conservation Biology More from this journal
- Volume:
- 33
- Issue:
- 2
- Pages:
- 307-318
- Publication date:
- 2018-07-15
- Acceptance date:
- 2018-07-11
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1523-1739
- ISSN:
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0888-8892
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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pubs:867711
- UUID:
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uuid:94ca6386-9a17-4b96-81b2-7cf1a7bdce02
- Local pid:
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pubs:867711
- Source identifiers:
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867711
- Deposit date:
-
2018-07-11
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Addison et al
- Copyright date:
- 2018
- Notes:
-
© 2018 The Authors. Conservation Biology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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