Skip to main content
Green Business
News article9 November 2022Directorate-General for Environment

Successful EBNS catalyses the business community ahead of crucial UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15)

B@B ebns news image

More than 500 business and finance delegates joined government and civil society representatives at the 2022 edition of the European Business and Nature Summit (EBNS). Building on the ACT-D (Assess, Commit, Transform, Disclose) framework, the Summit convened over 80 speakers across 20 sessions showcasing best practices and providing clear and actionable steps to help business and finance to contribute towards a nature positive world. The Summit inspired participants to take action, strengthening the ‘business for biodiversity movement’ in Europe and beyond, and called for an ambitious post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework to be negotiated within one month at the UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal (COP 15, 7-19 December 2022).

The following key messages were voiced by participants during the Summit:

Business and finance need to ramp up actions to address the challenges that lie ahead

A sustainable global future for people and nature is still within reach, but achieving it requires rapid transformative change that must be driven by unprecedented far-reaching actions. To address the challenge successfully requires taking into account the climate, biodiversity and social equity crises together. Leading businesses are already paving the way to integrate biodiversity in their value chain, operations or investments. The Summit, for example, welcomed new signatories of the Finance for Biodiversity Pledge, a group of 111 financial institutions spread across 20 countries representing €16.3 trillion in assets. The signatories committed to collaborating, sharing knowledge, engaging, assessing their own biodiversity impact, setting targets and publicly reporting on biodiversity matters by 2024. The conclusion is that business should not wait to start acting on nature and should do so through a pragmatic approach serving their needs building on the available frameworks and methods.

Nature positive is the new north star / southern cross guiding business action to protect nature

The conference highlighted the need for transforming our current economic paradigm towards a nature-positive economy that prioritises environmental and social impacts. Business and finance must break away from status quo, creating a new vision in which nature is fully integrated and nature-positive business models can thrive. To progress toward this goal, companies and financial institutions launched a discussion paper during the Summit, reflecting on what nature-positive means in practice. Nature positive – understood as the “global goal to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030 with a view of full recovery by 2050” – is seen as the new objective informing and guiding business action and under which every business has a role to play proportionate to their abilities and their responsibilities. Reversing nature loss and progressing towards a nature-positive world is the ultimate joint effort for nature and humanity, and requires a collective effort: either we achieve it together, or none of us will. Various organisations including the EU B@B Platform are aiming to clarify how to implement the nature-positive vision at the business level through the development of a ‘working definition’ and the provision of additional guidance.

Addressing climate and biodiversity-related risks simultaneously offers multiple benefits for business

Despite their different underlying drivers, both climate change and biodiversity loss are deeply interlinked. It is now well understood that neither will be successfully resolved unless both are tackled together. Addressing the synergies between mitigating biodiversity loss and climate change offers many opportunities to maximize benefits for people and planet and meet global development goals. More and more businesses are recognizing the integrated nature of sustainability issues and taking action by implementing ambitious climate and biodiversity targets, driving reductions in the use of natural resources across their value chains, or by transforming their products. Also, the efforts made by financial institutions to aggregate data on climate and biodiversity linked to assets are a testimony to the increased awareness of capitals markets. To foster comprehensive solutions, however, clear policy and guidance by governments are needed. These must help define clear and measurable targets for nature across business sectors while supporting accountability on biodiversity and climate risks.

Global leadership is necessary to raise the ambition towards COP15

All eyes are now turned towards COP27 to respond to the urgency of climate change. A few weeks later (from 7 to 19 December), an equally important COP will take place a in Montreal, addressing the biodiversity crisis. In the run up towards COP15, more than 330 companies are calling on its negotiators to include mandatory assessment and disclosure of biodiversity for all large companies and financials – giving a clear mandate to policymakers to make this bold commitment (Consult the #MakeItMandatory campaign for more details). The voice of business is essential to encourage governments to create the right incentives to make nature positive economy flourish and to unlock private investments in nature, both in Europe and globally. As the Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries Virginijus Sinkevičius highlighted at the Summit: “Biodiversity loss is bad for business. We rely on nature for natural resources that we use in the economy and more than half of the global GDP depends on nature and its services. Depleting nature thus means bankrupting business. We need nature to mitigate and lessen the impact of climate change, keep our water system in balance, pollinate our fields and protect our physical and mental health. Today, European business has made a clear statement ahead of COP15, living up to the essential role they can play in bringing nature back in our lives and our economy.”

How can we bring nature back in our lives and our economy?

Check out all the material from the Summit now available on the website, including:

Share and spread the voice on your social media using: #BusinessNatureSummit #ForNature #NatureIsEveryonesBusiness #MakeItMandator

Details

Publication date
9 November 2022
Author
Directorate-General for Environment