Ignoring biodiversity loss is not good for your business

What a truly awful time for SA businesses. First we had the worst drought in several decades, and now the corona lockdown. Long-suffering businesses could be forgiven for feeling like they are being punished. They would not be wrong.

The common denominator between the drought and the coronavirus is that they both have their roots in humanity’s relationship with nature, and nature is sending us a very clear message. This message was echoed recently by the UN International Resource Panel, which calculated that 90% of biodiversity loss and water stress have been caused by resource extraction and processing, and that globally two-thirds of this is done by private business.

In the same way that the drought brought into stark relief the need to take serious action on carbon emissions and climate change, so too the Covid-19 outbreak is highlighting the link between humanity’s destruction of biodiversity and the creation of the conditions conducive to new viruses and diseases.

Recent research in the field of planetary health has begun connecting the dots between human erosion of the natural resource base and the emergence of new forms of disease. Diseases such as Ebola, SARS, Mers and HIV/Aids have all moved across from the animal kingdom in the past few decades, and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention estimates three-quarters of new or emerging diseases that infect humans originated in animals.

Through our forestry, mining, agriculture, hunting and road-building we are disrupting ecosystems and creating the circumstances that force viruses and pathogens to seek out new hosts. Already the frequency, severity and financial effects of these events are growing from habitat loss alone. This will only be compounded by climate change effects such as the revival of long-frozen pathogens in melting permafrost.

The World Economic Forum’s 2020 Global Risks Report rated biodiversity loss as the second-most impactful and third-most likely risk over the next 10 years. It was almost as though the drafters of this report had a crystal ball when they wrote that “biodiversity loss has critical implications for humanity, from the collapse of food and health systems to the disruption of entire supply chains”. Clearly it is becoming absolutely critical that we ensure the decoupling of natural resource use and environmental effects from economic activity and human wellbeing if we are to have a sustainable future.

For this reason the Endangered Wildlife Trust’s National Biodiversity and Business Network (NBBN) report “Biodiversity

Performance Rating of SA Companies”, released in February, makes for sobering reading. The assessment reviewed 320 JSE-listed companies and 28 state-owned enterprises. It showed that while some improvements are being made, biodiversity is simply not on the radar for the vast majority of JSE- listed firms. The report finds there is a general lack of understanding of business-biodiversity dependencies, risks and associated benefits, and a lack of knowledge on how to recognise, measure, value and manage biodiversity impacts.

An international example of a business-biodiversity dependency is coffee, where 60% of varieties risk extinction due to climate change, disease and deforestation. Should this happen global coffee markets worth $83bn annually would be destabilised. Similarly, more than half of the world’s food comes from rice, wheat and maize, which already suffer annual losses of up to 16% of production from invasive species. Many such examples are currently being overlooked at businesses the world over, including SA.

In recognition of this, in January a group of investment managers including AXA, BNP Paribas, Sycomore and Mirova, launched a joint initiative to develop a measurement tool for investment impact on biodiversity. Existing carbon impact measurement tools are becoming well established, but these assessments remain largely focused on climate change. However, it is equally important that we preserve species and ecosystems. Biodiversity plays a vital role, and its collapse threatens to jeopardise the future of humanity.

Maguire holds a master’s degree in global change studies from Wits and has developed green economy solutions for the private sector, NGOs and the state for more than a decade.