Biodiversity loss has been pushed out of the global agenda by climate change, even though both issues are closely linked, have similar impacts on human welfare and need to be tackled urgently, together.

In fact, the architects of the Paris Agreement say: “There is no pathway to limiting global warming to 1.5C without action on protecting and restoring nature. Only by taking urgent action to halt and reverse the loss of nature this decade, while continuing to step up efforts to rapidly decarbonise our economies, can we hope to achieve the promise of the Paris Agreement.” (The Guardian; November 2022)

In their Living Planet Report (2022), WWF found that there has been a catastrophic average decline of 69% in species populations since 1970. “A million plant and animal species are threatened with extinction, we have lost half of the world’s corals and lose forest areas the size of 27 football fields every minute.” This is alarming, as we are highly dependent on a thriving natural ecosystem to provide us with our essential human needs, such as food, clothing, medicine etc.

It becomes clear that, just like in the case of climate change, businesses need to care about biodiversity. There are immense risks attached to an ever warming planet and biodiversity loss. At the same time, this dual crisis should not be reduced to just a discussion about risk. Right now, businesses have the opportunity to have a positive impact on both the climate and biodiversity regeneration!

At this event, we addressed the following questions:

• How are climate change and biodiversity loss interconnected?
• How can they be tackled together, as a dual crisis?
• What’s the role of businesses, and why should they care?