IUCN Global Business and Biodiversity Programme and the IUCN Species Survival Commission Species Monitoring Specialist Group, working with numerous colleagues in the business and conservations sectors, have published Guidelines for planning and monitoring corporate biodiversity performance. The Guidelines build on technical input and financial support from Nespresso, Boskalis and the Alcoa Foundation.
The aim of the Guidelines is to support businesses taking action on biodiversity to mitigate risks or attain net positive gains. They also address companies' increasing need for information on the state of biodiversity, the pressures on species and ecosystems linked to their operations, and the effectiveness of their responses, in order to plan nd monitor their operations.
The Guidelines are shaped around four stages that steer businesses through practical steps to plan biodiversity goals, choose and apply appropriate biodiversity indicators, and to collect, present and analyse data in a way that facilitates results-based management and corporate biodiversity reporting.
By adopting corporate level biodiversity goals and objectives, a company can prioritise its intervention at site level or in its supply chain, and eventually track its contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
In a related project, an IUCN team worked with Nespresso staff and their partners to understand the company’s current work related to biodiversity. The outcome is captured in this report, and includes a set of ambitious new goals and objectives around identified biodiversity priorities. These goals are accompanied by a set of biodiversity performance indicators that will allow the company to aggregate data and demonstrate its global corporate impact.
Earlier initiatives on biodiversity indicators
Previously, IUCN and Oxford University worked together to clarify the spectrum of biodiversity indicator applications for business. They developed a process to guide the development and selection of robust and relevant biodiversity indicators for business. The objective was to help businesses get started by asking the right questions and selecting existing indicators to help measure and track their biodiversity performance.
The development and use of biodiversity indicators in business: an overview builds on a suite of work focused on providing guidelines and tools specifically for business, and it is intended to contribute to the ongoing dialogue on biodiversity indicators within Europe and beyond.
