2010 is International Year on Biodiversity, but what might it mean for business?
Biodiversity has been the Cinderella among environmental issues, with the CEOs of even some of the world's biggest corporations comfortably confident that it has little—if anything—to do with their day-to-day preoccupations. Except, of course, where their operations directly impact rainforests, temperate wetlands or coral reefs, as in the case of a food company using palm oil whose production has involved the clearance of virgin forest. Most business leaders assume that the protection of species and genetic diversity is a matter for governments. And they are not wrong in making that assumption. But as the evidence of biodiversity erosion mounts and the sense of government failure in many parts of the world begin to press in, the risk grows that business will be back in the spotlight.
Attention will focus both on corporations and their supply chains as agents in biodiversity destruction but also, perhaps more importantly long term, as one of the few agents of change with the capacity to come up with innovative new solutions to a challenge that has undermined so many past civilizations.
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