IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature

Many businesses are using BES-related scientific knowledge and a growing number of these firms are also investing in their own BES research, collecting data on BES, or developing or road-testing BES-related methodologies.

Much of this business-driven BES research work is undertaken in the context of impact monitoring and risk assessment, often in collaboration with environmental NGOs and other BES stakeholders including environmental consulting firms.

The most common example of this work is the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), now a requirement in many areas of business. EIAs typically generate a wealth of baseline and monitoring data on a range of BES variables.

Other examples of BES-related research efforts by business include:

• Assessments of ecosystem health, such as the wetlands assessment carried out in South Africa by Mondi (as part of its programme with conservation NGOs to protect and rehabilitate wetlands in South Africa);


• The biodiversity monitoring carried out by Holcim as part of the company’s biodiversity management system developed for its quarry sites. Site-specific indicators are used to measure biodiversity performance and qualitative surveys are undertaken to provide additional information on key habitats or ecosystem features;


• Assessments of ecosystem services including applications of the World Resources Institute (WRI)/WBCSD Corporate Ecosystem Services Review (ESR) and WBCSD Corporate Ecosystem Valuation (CEV) methodologies. For example, by conducting a CSR at one of its mining sites in Quebec, Alcoa collected information on the status of five ecosystem services (including air quality regulation, water purification and waste treatment, recreation and ecotourism). The use of CEV by SA Water, a water utility company in Australia, assessed the value of ecosystem services (such as erosion control and carbon sequestration) provided under different catchment management options;


• Tools developed by Rio Tinto, in collaboration with environmental specialists, to help the company achieve and report on its commitment to have a Net Positive Impact (NPI) on biodiversity. These tools include a biodiversity assessment protocol, a biodiversity action planning tool, and an NPI accounting and offset design methodology;


• The biodiversity assessment technology developed jointly by UNEP-WCMC and Nestlé and used by the company to gather information on the importance of biodiversity and presence of protected areas in relation to its factory sites.

All these examples relied on large quantities of data on BES variables, either generated by the companies themselves or, more often, extracted from existing records. High quality data is obviously essential for the companies to use as the basis for their BES-related decision-making. The lack of sufficiently relevant and robust data is mentioned in several cases as a key limitation for the BES research work. Other research-related challenges include:

• Difficulties in attributing responsibility for certain BES impacts because of the time delays involved, the complex relationship between cause and effect, and the issue of indirect effects (e.g. via supply chain);
• Problems in using existing BES methodologies, and the need to refine these in order to make them more robust, effective and user-friendly;
• Difficulties in interpreting the data available (linked to a general lack of easily accessible data) and the costs involved in describing and quantifying impacts.

Companies active in BES-related research come from a range of sectors and typically include those that rely directly on the availability of natural products (e.g. minerals, oil and gas, fisheries and forestry), healthy functioning ecosystems (e.g. agriculture, biofuels, food and beverages), and healthy ecosystem services (e.g. water utilities, hydropower, tourism), as well as financial institutions that invest in such businesses.