European business meetings on biodiversity

Forbes.com contributor Francis Vorhies reports on two business meetings on biodiversity that took place in Europe. The EC Business and Biodiversity Platform organised a multi-sectoral workshop to review the EU's new biodiversity strategy, in the implementation of which - it is clear - business has a key role to play.

For the agriculture and food industry sectors this includes 'greening' agricultural subsidies and regulations to restore and conserve biodiversity in agricultural lands. For the non-energy extractive industries sector, where site restoration is a central part of their business model, ensuring biodiversity-responsible restoration. For the finance sector, the new EU strategy opens up opportunities to apply biodiversity standards to financing.

The second meeting - a roundtable on Business and Biodiversity - was hosted by the French business school, INSEAD. The roundtable featured presentations from business and academia. All have indicated that biodiversity is indeed an emerging key sustainability issue which links to other critical issues such as climate change, energy efficiency, water, employment and social equity. A most interesting insight of the roundtable was that business not only has a role to play with respect to the conservation of biodiversity and the sustainable and equitable use of biological resources, but that corporate biodiversity responsibility directly links international policy to international commerce.

Read the full article on www.forbes.com.
For more on INSEAD, go to www.insead.edu/home/