24 August 2010 | Luca Del Buono
Biodiversity, Climate Change

 

Issues relating to consumer environmental concerns such as biodiversity are quickly becoming more important to business executives, a recent survey has shown.

The survey, conducted amongst 1,576 executives and released earlier this month by business insight organization McKinsey & Company, has revealed that 43 per cent of executives consider climate change to be the top environmental issue facing their business while 59 per cent see biodiversity in particular as an opportunity to incorporate sustainable business practices and utilise natural resources in product development.

Half of executives involved in the survey also announced that their companies were already taking positive steps in tackling biodiversity issues – the two most common being the communication of current renewable resource use as well as what initiatives were being put in place to reduce that usage.

For 43 per cent of executives, 'climate change/energy efficiency' was the single most important issue relating to the environment, sustainability and biodiversity. For 42 per cent of executives, waste pollution was the second most important issue, followed by water scarcity with 27 per cent. Issues of human rights were fourth in the list.

The survey also quizzed executives on specific questions relating to biodiversity such as what they believe the term to mean, how important it is to the business as a whole, what specific risks it might pose to said business, what actions businesses are taking to address the issue and what type of regulation they would consider supporting to maintain biodiversity.

Biodiversity, which is defined as the variation of life forms in an ecosystem, was considered the most important issue by nine per cent of executives, making it the tenth most important issue overall. A total of 64 per cent considered biodiversity at least 'somewhat important' to their business with 54 per cent of the opinion that biodiversity should be within the top ten most important issues to businesses.

According to the survey, biodiversity loss is somewhat of a regional issue: the majority of South American executives expressed concern while only 15 per cent of British executives did. Only two of the 100 largest companies described biodiversity and habitat loss as strategic issues.

Last month, a survey carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that biodiversity poses a significant risk to business profits. In this survey, however, only 25 per cent of executives considered the loss of biodiversity to be a strategic business issue.

The results were compared to conclusions drawn in a similar survey conducted by McKinsey in 2007. At that time, only 27 per cent of executives considered the environmental concerns as a profitable opportunity as opposed to a risk. This indicates that businesses are growing increasingly aware of the positive effects of environmental issues both in terms of corporate profit and in terms of wider social implications.

The UN declared 2010 to be 'The year of biodiversity' in recognition of the growing concerns. In addition to mitigating the negative effects of biodiversity loss, businesses can also generate profit from its conservation. For example, agriculture, fisheries and forestry all depend on a stable ecosystem in order to ensure stable profits.


Author: Tom Watts | Climate Action

Images: Trees for Cyprus | Flickr

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