A new report from environmental disclosure platform CDP has found that the majority of companies committed to considering biodiversity in their strategies, have not translated such pledges into tangible action in the past year.
The data, released publicly on November 30, showed that 70% of the over 7,700 companies surveyed do not assess the impact of their value chain on biodiversity. It also revealed that more than half of companies have not taken action to progress their biodiversity-related commitments in the last year.
The not-for-profit group, which runs a global disclosure system for investors and companies, highlighted that recent losses of “biodiversity and associated ecosystem services” currently cost an estimated $4 – 20 trillion per year, with CDP expecting the figure to increase exponentially.
“These findings make the outcomes of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s COP15 summit even more critical,” CDP argued. Target 15 of the Global Biodiversity Framework, which will be negotiated at COP15, includes a proposal to make it mandatory for large business and financial institutions to disclose their impacts and dependencies on nature.
Sue Armstrong Brown, global director for environmental standards at CDP said that the opportunity presented at COP15 has gone from being “once in a decade” to “once in a generation,” warning that without intervention, it is likely that biodiversity and ecosystems will be damaged beyond repair in just 10 years.