Title: Business and Biodiversity Sub Title : Enhancing Capacity of Businesses Under Leaders

Title: Business and Biodiversity
Sub Title : Enhancing Capacity of Businesses under Leaders for Nature project

What is the Idea? : The idea is to proactively engage with the businesses, to build their capacity, to help them and their value chains in reducing their impacts on Biodiversity.

Background:Biodiversity, the basis of life and our resilience to different shocks on earth, is immensely at risk. Currently one out of every 8 birds, one out of every 8 mammals, one out of every 3 amphibians, 6 out of seven 7 Marine Turtles are threatened with extinction. The situation is so stark that IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, indicates that one third of all assessed species on earth are threatened (approx 18,000 out of assessed 54,000). In last few decades we have lost about 50% of wetlands , 40% of forests, 35% of Mangroves and many other Key Ecosystems. Globally we have been eroding our Natural Capital to the tune of 11% to 14% of Global GDP, and in India, a conservative estimate suggests that this erosion of Natural Capital in India is to the tune of 5.7% of national GDP.

Corporates are Key stakeholders as they have high footprints on Biodiversity (Mining, Oil and gas, Infrastructure Development) or they are highly dependent on it (Pharmaceuticals, Food and Beverage , Tourism,) or they can be the influencers or drivers (Research & Consul. Finance)

What will be done? By engaging Businesses in dialogue to assess their Biodiversity Impact and dependencies and to enable them to formulate right strategies to take care of biodiversity in their operations and in their value chain, biodiversity loss can be reduced. Under this process different sector specific workshops will be undertaken to help sectors:

to realize the biodiversity loss happening around them
to map their sectors’ footprint on the loss
to identify strategies how they can formulate ecologically responsible business strategies
designing transformed products, those having lower or minimal ecological footprints
Corporate, Community interface will be created to ensure collaborative participation in conservation

Who will be benefitted?

Society at large: as Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services provide several physical, social, cultural and economical services at nature subsidized prices.

Businesses :Union for Ethical BioTrade’s Biodiversity Barometer Survey (2011),suggests that a high proportion of consumers (84%) are ready to stop buying unsustainable products . A new market on sustainable products is thus emerging.Businesses can develop transformative models and showcase their transformed products with ‘Biodiversity Sensitive Ratings’ on their products and services, to tap this emerging market.

What is the scale of operation and impacts visualized?

The scale of operation visualized is Pan India initially and Asia level in long run.

What is the current status of this program?

Currently this program is being run by IUCN India as a network of businesses with 8 companies, which is expected to expend and become 10.The Program has conducted 6 master classes and multiple incompany sessions to build capacity of member companies. Topics covered so far are ‘Business and Ecosystem Linkages’;‘Corporate Ecosystem Services Review’;‘Biodiversity Reporting’, ‘Valuing Natural Capital’; ‘Eco-restoration opportunities in Aravali, to reduce the water stress in Gurgaon the Corporate Hub’ ; ‘A conversation with businesses to enhance conservation on the east coast of India’. Recently a series of incompany sessions were undertaken, in collaboration with WBCSD to train 60professionals of 9 large scale cement companies , introducing to them ‘Integrated Biodiversity Management System (IBMS)’ and ‘Biodiversity Indicator Reporting System (BIRS)’, which enables them to take biodiversity informed mgt decisions.

What kind of Support is required?

This program was getting a modest grant from IUCN NL, which is ending with the closure of year 2015. The program still needs some support so that it could gain required number of business members, who could get benefits from the capacity building programs of LfN and start paying for its services to make the program sustainable.

Budget Item / Rates (INR)
Human Resource Cost / 25,00,000
Training / 1,000,000
Workshops / 1,500,000
Campaigns / 3,000,000
Admin and Miscellaneous / 2,000,000
Total / 10,000,000

What would be different in new program?

The new program will be an improved version and will target sectors to bring sectoral impacts. It will focus on

(A)Building Sector having huge acreage in Urban Areas (Real Estate, IT Campuses, Educational Institutions, etc) to focus on urban biodiversity with a goal to enhance indigenous specie richness and specie abundance.

(B)Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services (BES) dependent sector (Food and Beverage company, Hotel and Tourism; Pharmaceuticals; Agri Business, Forestry and Fishery) to focus on flora and fauna diversity, importance of Key Stone species, Importance of Ecosystem Services and restoration of regionally important eco-systems for reviving ecosystem services and environmental flows,Regional biodiversity index improvement

(C)Extractive Sectors (Oil and Gas, Mining, Hydro and Thermal Power, Infrastructure development Agencies) to focus on degraded landscapes, regionally important eco-systems for reviving ecosystem services and environmental flows,Regional biodiversity index improvement

(D)Leveraging Sector (Research and Consultancy, Financial Institutions, Insurance, Academic Institutions) to garner larger support through science and economics based arguments; those will brainstorm consumers to create Natural Capital Evaluative markets. As a response of this companies will also work toward and embrace transformative business models.

Activities : Based on the objectives of sectoral engagement

1)Increased number of Master Classes will be delivered

2)In-company sessions will be given to help companies design transformative products and business models

3)Corporate, Community interface will be created to ensure collaborative participation in conservation

4)Regional and national campaigns will be run for conservation of species where corporates could also participate under their social responsibility programs.

What is the sustainability plan of this ?

The program annually requires approx INR 10,000,000 while it charges companies 250,000 per company per annum. Once program gets the count off 40 , the program will be able to stand on its own feet as a self sustainable program.