Building biodiversity business- notes from the cutting edge

25 October 2008

Source: World Business Council for Sustainable Development

In March 2008, Shell and the International Union for Conservation of Nature  jointly published their report Building Biodiversity Business. The report makes a clear case for a new approach to conserving nature by harnessing the profit motive to conserve biodiversity and restore ecosystem health.

Taking biodiversity business to scale

Building Biodiversity Business by Shell International Limited (Shell) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) outlines the magnitude of the challenge and reviews the efforts to develop new business models for biodiversity conservation across a range of sectors and using a range of approaches - such as organic agriculture, certified forestry and fisheries, eco-tourism, bio-carbon offsets, etc. The report also analyses in detail the pre-requisites for taking biodiversity business to scale, including public policy and other enabling frameworks, technical assistance and finance.

Pilot projects

Since publishing the report, Shell and IUCN have continued their collaboration to develop a set of pilot projects that can demonstrate the viability of biodiversity business in different contexts. The projects are in various stages of development and include:

• A pilot biodiversity offset in Qatar, designed to compensate for disturbance to marine and terrestrial habitats from oil and gas operations. This initiative forms part of a suite of pilot biodiversity offset projects under the Business and Biodiversity Offsets Program (BBOP);
  
  
• A feasibility study in the western US to assess the potential ecological and fi nancial benefi ts that could be secured by improving the management of Shell's land holdings, particularly parcels not needed for current operations. Various state and federal regulations offer tax incentives as well as the opportunity to generate environmental credits for restoring wetlands or for securing the habitat of endangered species. In some cases, these credits may be "banked" against future environmental liabilities or sold to neighboring land developers who may be legally required to compensate for the adverse environmental impacts of their projects.
  
  
• One or more commercial conservation investments in southeast Asia that aim to demonstrate a "gamechanging" approach that would increase the economic value of conserving natural forests in the context of growing pressures on forest land to meet rising demand for biofuels and other commodities. If successful, this initiative could lead to the establishment of new commercial conservation asset managers based on revenues from rapidly growing markets for ecosystem goods and services.

Widening the base

IUCN is involved in similar initiatives with several other major companies. For example, IUCN and Rio Tinto are jointly exploring opportunities to generate marketable ecosystem services on land owned or managed by the company. This includes potential biodiversity banks in Africa, as well as the opportunity to generate marketable carbon credits by restoring soils and natural vegetation or by preventing emissions from deforestation and degradation.

Similarly, IUCN and Holcim are working together on a methodology to support development of biodiversity-friendly, small-scale enterprise in communities near Holcim facilities in the developing world. They aim to test the methodology in several countries in the near future.

Progress must be made

Most of these pilot projects and feasibility studies are in the very early stages of development. Some of them may not proceed or succeed, at first. But IUCN and its corporate partners remain convinced that new ways of combing business and nature conservation can and must be found if the world is to have any chance of slowing, let alone halting, the accelerating loss of biological diversity around the world.