Biodiversity - Accounting for Nature
Why biodiversity matters to businesses
Every business relies on nature. Even without realising it, businesses are in an ecosystem and have an impact on and are impacted by it.
For businesses, biodiversity means everything from clean air and water, fuel, food, raw materials, minerals, fibers, pollination of crops, climate regulation for a stable climate, and much more. For example, agribusiness relies on the diversity of wild relatives of major food crops, as a resource to ensure crop resistance to disease and pests.
Business rely on biodiversity for the wellbeing of their staff, their consumers, in their own operations and along their supply chains. And business are coming under increasing pressure to support protection of biodiversity.
Biodiversity is increasing in importance to business, and businesses will be expected to know about biodiversity action and to engage with it. The International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group, describes biodiversity as a fundamental component of long-term business survival. Benefits of biodiversity-action can include:
- enhanced reputation
- employee engagement and wellbeing
- achieving responsible-business targets
- mitigating risk of regulatory non-compliance
- reputational damage
- supply chain disruption.
In this article, find out how nature is everyone's business, and what businesses can do to protect it.
Biodiversity and Chartered Accountants Ireland
On March 3, 2022, Chartered Accountants Ireland Chartered Accountants Ireland joins profession-wide commitment to reverse nature loss. Working together as part of the Global Accounting Alliance (GAA), the CEOs of 10 of the world’s leading accountancy institutes signed the call to action ‘Nature is Everyone’s Business’ to signal the important role the profession plays in this crisis.