Advocacy groups and businesses are clashing over the role of the private sector in biodiversity preservation at COP15. Find out more.
Canada is “on board” and wants to be a “constructive partner” in the effort to mobilize resources, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said at a Dec. 13 press conference. He encouraged other wealthy countries to do the same. Though talks haveEnvironment Minister Steven Guilbeault speaks at the opening of a cocktail hosted by Canada to welcome delegates to COP15 at the Palais des congrès de Montréal.
Some of the non-profits think the international bureaucrats leading the effort have been co-opted. The CBD Secretariat, “is quite underfunded, and then some of the corporations come and say, ‘Oh, but you’re underfunded. We can help you,'” Marien said. This is just one of myriad ways corporations “infiltrate” the proceedings, she said.to mandatory assessments and reports on their impacts on nature, as well the ways in which they depend on it for their business operations, per Target 15.
Marien called it “greenwashing,” a term critics use to label companies that overly hype their commitment to environmental goals. O’Brien disagrees. Businesses want mandatory monitoring because they are confused by nebulous targets, an “alphabet soup of standards,” he said. Businesses want clear policies and rules because uncertainties create risk and increase costs. If they don’t have clarity, companies will flee “high-risk areas” and take their capital with them, he said.
Organizations such as the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures , which O’Brien chairs, are trying to provide information to investors about what companies are doing aboutThis advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.O’Brien is a proponent of bringing business and biodiversity together using a common, qualitative standard. It would be similar to the way the carbon tax quantifies the negative impacts of climate change.
“These are subjects that we must talk about ,” said Frederick Morency vice-president of sustainability, strategic initiatives and innovation at Toronto-based Schneider Electric Canada Inc., who said he thinks it should be mandatory for all companies to make biodiversity disclosures. The initiatives must make concrete change, and can’t remain “on the nice corporate powerpoint,” he said.
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