Achieving a nature-positive future in Asia

AS A term, biodiversity can be difficult. It can feel unclear or difficult to explain. The word implies the broad diversity of all life on Earth, everything that is living on our planet – our nature. Biodiversity encompasses and is impacted by our activity on Earth. This extends to businesses and their relationships with the natural world.

It has taken a long time for boardrooms to add biodiversity to the agenda. It is only in recent years that biodiversity issues have been recognised as important or of equal importance to climate issues. When I first started measuring business impacts on nature, the concept was understood but very few businesses I spoke to felt it was right for them to invest in it; climate change was the pressing focus.

Now, 10 years later, the need to address biodiversity in a business context has reached the boardroom agenda and we are starting to see business leaders building an understanding of how their businesses relate to biodiversity and the natural environment. In the Asia-Pacific region in particular, this is hugely significant, owing to its status as a biodiversity hotspot.

Biodiversity in Asia

The region is home to almost half the world’s richly biodiverse areas, which contain rare plant and animal species across jungles, mountains and waters. But these habitats and populations are in decline and protecting them is of increasing priority. Globally, the extent of nature loss is placing around one million species at risk of extinction, a rate that is only accelerating in pace. Historically, business activities have contributed towards this decline through the exploitation of natural resources. Now they are playing a role in its reversal.

The business case

In the business context, how we stop this current trend of loss is fundamentally about resource use and its interplay with our responsibility to people and planet.

In many regions of the world, we are seeing an increasing awareness and a different way of thinking that recognises that exploitative resource use is negatively impacting both the planet and vulnerable communities. Tackling this comes down to how we use the resources available to us and better manage what nature offers, so that there is enough for all. Where, regionally, biodiversity is of vital importance to Asia, this question of resource management is equally pressing. Responsible supply-chain management will become the defining business challenge for the region because much of the regional economy relies on raw resource production.

Countries across the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in South-east Asia, are at the heart of global supply chains. These countries supply the world with agricultural and horticultural goods that support business all over the world in the production of consumer goods. Asia is the epicentre of this activity; so managing these supply chains at their source is vital to breaking the trend of biodiversity decline.

But how do we better understand those links between supply chains and daily interactions?

Where ecosystems begin to change, this affects the availability of resources that are used to produce a given commodity. When this material is no longer available or it increases in cost, that has a direct impact on the product. If we look at the goods and services that we rely on from the natural environment – food, water, timber, plant oils, for example – they are all provided by nature and sustained by regional biodiversity.

If the ecosystem starts to collapse as we are currently witnessing, it will come to a point at which nature can no longer provide those resources upon which we rely.

No-regrets action

The challenge of overcoming biodiversity loss is not going to get any smaller or easier to tackle, but it is possible to take action and there are advantages to leading the way. The reality of nature decline is a real risk to businesses and one that will only become of greater concern if no action is taken.

In this sense, it is valuable to begin working on voluntary biodiversity disclosure reporting rather than waiting for it to become mandatory. Frameworks such as the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures are developing reporting mechanisms to support businesses in identifying and acting on their nature-related risks.

Understanding key points of interaction between the business and the natural environment is that vital starting point: what natural resources does the business rely on? An assessment maps out these points of interaction and where potential issues are likely to be.

We have the answers and the actions, now we need leaders across the business landscape to show there is also the will to make the changes needed to safeguard our resources.

There are already governments leading the way in terms of policy – we need only look to Singapore to see sustainability in action. The Singapore Green Plan brings together a country that has made real investments in its own future through national-level planning.

What is clear is that waiting for action on biodiversity at a business level to become mandatory – such as carbon reporting is now in some regions – is not an option. Identifying key risks and working to restore nature along those supply lines will have a significant impact on mitigating material risks and in protecting the natural world.

The writer is RSK chief sustainability officer. She is a leader in analysing biodiversity impacts and delivering assessments of business impacts on the natural world.