Posts in business
SDG15: How carbon offsets are protecting forests - and changing lives

Business Green

March 12, 2020
Corporate investment in carbon offsets is helping to fund a project in West Africa that is delivering on multiple Sustainable Development Goals through its protection of precious forest habitats and its services for local communities.

The Upper Guinean Forest of West Africa is one of only three forested biodiversity hotspots in Africa. Until the end of the 19th century it covered most of Sierra Leone, Liberia, South-East Guinea, Southern Ivory Coast and South-West Ghana, but less than a fifth of this rainforest remains today.

The Greater Gola Landscape, straddling the Sierra Leone-Liberia border comprises the largest remnant of this critical ecosystem - over 350,000 hectares in a mosaic of protected areas, community forests, and smallholders' agricultural lands.

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'It's not enough to cut CO2 emissions. The natural systems that sustain life are on the critical list'

Ethical Corporation

March 3, 2020
Angeli Mehta reports on how companies like Danone, Unilever, and China's Cofco International are addressing biodiversity loss through platforms like the Business for Nature coalition and One Planet Business for Biodiversity

This decade has been billed as the decade of climate action – but it’s not enough to cut carbon emissions, we also have to reverse the precipitous loss of our planet’s biodiversity.

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5 reasons why CEOs must care about safeguarding nature

World Economic Forum

February 25, 2020
At the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos in January this year, there was unprecedented interest in and commitment to fighting the climate and nature emergencies facing humanity. Although the world’s 7.6 billion people represent just 0.01% of all living things by weight, humanity has already caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of all plants. Supporting the concept of stakeholder capitalism, leading CEOs, government leaders and heads of civil society organizations came together in the Swiss Alps to galvanize support for an integrated nature action agenda across the issues of climate, biodiversity, forests, oceans and sustainable development.

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Natural Climate Solutions: How 4 global companies leverage nature to tackle the climate crisis

GreenBiz

February 24, 2020
It’s 2020. We’ve officially entered the defining decade to tackle the climate crisis. As businesses ramp up climate action commitments through science-based targets and net-zero or carbon neutral goals, they are realizing there are untapped opportunities to work with nature instead of against it. Nature-based climate solutions will provide the lever of change to make faster progress toward those goals, and it just might help them go above and beyond.

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For Forest Survival, Corporations Are Accountable To Uphold Indigenous Land Rights

International Business Times - OpEd

February 22, 2020
As climate change deepens, forests –– those lush, abundant, mysterious stands of trees that for millennia have quietly produced the air we breathe and the water we drink –– have never been more critical to our survival. It’s become clear that,  as leading scientists have said, “Our planet’s future climate is inextricably tied to the future of its forests.” For a climate stable future, we must keep forests standing, as they are one of the most effective tools we have to combat climate change. Thankfully, the basic prescription for saving much of the world’s forests is refreshingly simple: hold corporations accountable for their role in driving deforestation and uphold Indigenous rights to their ancestral lands. 

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The business of nature

National Geographic

January 24, 2020
Business as usual isn’t working for the planet. Human-driven activities, such as deforestation and overfishing, have put one million species at risk of extinction, according to a ground-breaking 2019 United Nations report. The report is a thunderous wake-up call for the world on the need to make protecting nature job No. 1.

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Big Business Says It Will Tackle Climate Change, but Not How or When

The New York Times

January 23, 2020
Business titans who for decades brushed off warnings about climate change arrived at the annual World Economic Forum this week ready to show their newfound enthusiasm for the cause.

Having previously played down the need for the reform that scientists had urged, finance leaders and company chiefs conspicuously rallied around a consensus that accelerating global temperatures pose a significant risk to society — and to business.

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Companies Support New Targets to Protect Earth's Life Support Systems

Yahoo Finance

January 20, 2020
Business leaders attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week are supporting a new science-based approach to tackling their companies' impacts on both climate change and all the Earth's natural systems.

The fight against climate change cannot be won without both decarbonizing our economies and restoring balance to the "global commons": land, oceans, freshwater and biodiversity, alongside climate.

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L'OCCITANE Launches Ecosystem Restoration Fund

Yahoo Finance

January 19, 2020
L'OCCITANE Group today announced the creation of a fund to support ecosystems that are severely affected by natural disasters, such as the devastating fires in the Amazon and Australia. Determined to protect biodiversity for future generations, the L'OCCITANE Ecosystem Restoration Fund aims to respond to climate emergencies on an ad hoc basis. The fund will be financed by a voluntary internal donation campaign among L'OCCITANE's shareholders.

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Conservationists find new partners to bring back nature: businesses

The Hill

January 14, 2020
In Portugal’s Greater Côa Valley, a transformation is underway. Once degraded and overgrown, thousands of hectares of this remote ecosystem are being restored and rewilded. Plans are afoot to reintroduce wild horses, roe deer and Iberian ibex. This restoration will improve the connection between the Malcata mountain range and the Douro Valley. It is an all-round win for Portuguese wildlife.

But if this grand vision is to be sustainable, it needs to be profitable. The valley has suffered one of the highest rates of land abandonment in Europe, which has contributed to the decline of the landscape — the area became overgrown in the absence of grazing farm animals, and that in turn has harmed biodiversity and increased the risk of wildfire.

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