COP 15: IMPLICATIONS FOR BUSINESS

THE MYSTERY

On Easter Day, 1722, three Dutch ships cast their anchors at a completely isolated, unknown Polynesian island. The captain of the fleet was the explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who quickly realized that Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, as it is now known, held one of the greatest puzzles of all time.

The island was a barren wasteland with no forests or wildlife and Roggeveen described the few thousand inhabitants as “small, lean, timid and miserable”. How could this completely isolated and primitive civilization have cut, transported and erected the several hundred giant stone statues, with an average weight of 10 tons - the heaviest weighing a staggering 85 tons? The answer to this question was blowing in the subtropical breeze for centuries.

THE CLARITY

Modern science shows that the history of Easter Island is the most extreme example of human induced ecological collapse ever recorded. It turns out that the island was once a typical Polynesian island, covered partly by diverse forest with an abundance of wildlife and a highly sophisticated civilization of around 15,000 individuals. In other words, it once looked exactly like its closest neighboring island, Pitcairn.

However, in the period between year 1250 and 1500 a tribal competition, centered on cutting, transporting and erecting the most and the biggest stone statues consumed all disposable resources on the island, leading to deforestation, and consequently, lack of timber for canoes and construction, soil erosion and complete extinction of 22 species of trees, 6 species of land birds, 26 species of seabirds, starvation, and in the end complete ecological collapse.

THREE HUNDRED YEARS LATER

In parallel to the the small, isolated island in the vast Pacific ocean, the Earth is a small, isolated planet in the vast Milky Way galaxy. And like the tribes that brought collapse to their flourishing Polynesian island paradise, human competition for and consumption of the limited resources on our planet have long eroded the very foundations of the economies, food security and health of all nations on Earth.

Animal and plant species are disappearing faster than at any time since the extinction of the dinosaurs. When measured by weight 60% of all mammals on Earth are now livestock, while 36% are humans and only 4% are wild animals. We cut down forests, we appropriate wild habitats, we expand our cities and farmland, we mine for oil, gas and metals, we extract sand from the ocean floor, we trawl every inch of the seven seas, we produce, we distribute, we consume and we multiply. All at a now clearly unsustainable level.

Unfortunately that is not all. Because then comes the disposal of the millions of tons of waste and garbage we produce as biproducts of the extraction, production, distribution and consumption. Emissions, chemicals, plastics and various other non-degradable materials. This disposal is done in an equally unsustainable way, as the UN Secretary General unsentimentally pointed out a few days ago.

The effect of these unsustainable behaviors will be an ecological collapse as predictable as the one Jacob Roggeveen and his astounded crew members witnessed on Ester Island 300 years ago. Some 70% of the world’s ice-free land surface and 66% of our marine environment have now been significantly altered by humans, and species populations are down by almost 70% since 1970.??

A PARIS AGREEMENT IN MONTREAL

This is the dramatic backdrop for the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, which is now in session in Montreal, Canada. The hope and expectation is that the nearly 200 nations at the summit will commit to a "Paris Agreement for Nature" (referring to the legally binding landmark treaty on climate action adopted by 193 countries in Paris 2015).

The delegates must agree on the Global Biodiversity Framework, (GBF) and the following vision: By 2050, biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for all people.

The 2030 mission of the GBF is centered around the iconic 30X30 requirement, which entails that 30% of the worlds landmass and oceans must be protected from human exploitation by 2030. This however does not mean that the GBF sets nations or businesses free to continue "business as usual" on the remaining 70% of the planet. Far from it.

The GBF is set to mandate corporate action from assessment/certification of raw materials through to disclosure of biodiversity footprint. The draft version includes over 20 different biodiversity targets, that need to be initiated immediately and completed by 2030. Many of these targets will obviously impact businesses and be impossible to achieve without aligned response from the business community at large.

IMPLICATIONS FOR BUSINESS

The World Economic Forum has convincingly demonstrated that over half of the world's BDP is directly dependent on nature. Business leaders are aware of the alarming trends related to biodiversity and climate change - climate and biodiversity related issues are identified as the three most severe risks for the next decade by a World Economic Forum poll of nearly 1.000 global experts and leaders. Add to this that a host of surveys show that consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable products.

Despite this, only 10-15% of companies have assessed their full scope 3 impact on nature and only pioneering companies have started reducing their negative impacts on nature by rethinking their strategies, value chains and partnerships as well as by initiating targeted innovation of products, services, processes and business models.

Among the more than twenty targets mentioned in the GBF target #15 specifically addresses the actions required of companies and financial institutions in the effort to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. In so many words it reads:

Take legal, administrative or policy measures to ensure that all business and financial institutions:

(a) Through mandatory requirements regularly monitor, assess, and fully and transparently disclose their impacts on biodiversity (along their operations, supply and value chains and portfolios)

(b) Provide information needed to consumers to enable the public to make responsible consumption choices

(c) Comply and report on access and benefit-sharing

(d) Take legal responsibility for infractions, including through penalties, and liability and redress for damage

(e) Follow a rights-based approach, including human rights and the rights of Mother Earth.

All in order to reduce negative impacts on biodiversity, increase positive impacts, reduce biodiversity-related risks to business and financial institutions, and move towards sustainable patterns of production, fostering a circular economy.

Besides target #15 there are serious implications for businesses in target #2 Ecosystem restoration, #3 Protect/conserve land and sea, #7 Reduce pollution, #8 Minimize impact of climate change, #18: Eliminate harmful incentives, #19: Financial resource mobilization for restoration and sustainability and #21: Indigenous people and local community participation in decision-making. Action on these will be as important as action on target #15.

No corporate executive will find the targets in the GBF trivial. In that way the GBF reflects the situation. Fortunately several global systems are mobilizing and potent tools such as Science Based Targets for Nature (SBTN) and Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) are either ready for use or just around the corner. Now we need to recalibrate and act.

THE CURE IS THE CAUSE

The Greek philosopher and polymath Aristotle (384-322 BCE) wrote in his seminal work "Politics" (book 1):

"... it is evident that plants are for the sake of animals, and that animals are for the sake of human beings, domestic ones both for using and eating, and most but not all wild ones for food and other kinds of support, so that clothes and the other tools may be got from them”.

Since then we have believed that one single species, out of the hundreds of thousands on the planet, is somehow more deserving of the fruits of the Earth than any other. We have come to believe that it is our right to extract, kill, exploit, pollute and destroy as we see fit. The results of this particular world view are now in. We find ourselves on the cusp of the Sixth Mass Extinction. On the horizon we see the barren Easter Island with all it's useless stone idols. A recalibration is needed.

Will the delegates at COP15 in Montreal demonstrate that we have become wiser than the ancient tribes of Easter Island? I hope so. I hope for a Paris agreement for Nature. But whether or not the delegates succeed we can all do our part, governments, businesses and private citizens. Because ultimately, the cure must be found in the cause; our way of living on this planet.

Reflections, December 2022. Torsten Hvidt