The full report in Chinese available HERE
In recent years, a growing international consensus has emerged on addressing climate change and promoting sustainable development. Biodiversity is the cornerstone of social development and human well-being, and biodiversity conservation is the key to climate change adaptation and sustainable development. However, global biodiversity is facing many severe challenges.
Enterprises, the primary users of ecosystem services, must be active players in biodiversity conservation. Corporate biodiversity disclosure can help companies better understand their dependencies and impacts on nature, manage the nature-related risks and opportunities in the whole product life cycle, and improve biodiversity governance at a corporate level. Corporate biodiversity disclosure not only helps to improve the biodiversity performance of enterprises but also contributes to the biodiversity conservation of the whole country. Promoting corporate biodiversity disclosure is conducive to enhancing China’s leadership and contribution to addressing this global issue.
Focusing on corporate biodiversity disclosure, the following research creates a practical “Corporate Biodiversity Disclosure Framework” for Chinese enterprises by integrating the international framework for biodiversity disclosures with the current state of corporate biodiversity disclosure in China. The framework aims to analyze the relationship between biodiversity, ecosystem service value assessment, and natural capital accounting to provide companies with the information necessary for biodiversity risk management.
The research is divided into “6+1” sections:
1. The background of biodiversity disclosure.
This section includes the definition of biodiversity, the development of biodiversity at home and abroad, and the current state of biodiversity disclosure in China.
2. The importance of biodiversity disclosure.
This section discusses the relationship between biodiversity and economic stability, China’s macro policies of sustainable development, long-term industry development, and the opportunities and risks under the trend of green transition from macro, medium, and micro-level perspectives.
3. The study of domestic and international biodiversity disclosure.
This section categorizes and analyzes global biodiversity management and disclosure frameworks and serves as a reference for Section 4.
4. The design of the biodiversity disclosure framework for Chinese enterprises.
This section contains a description of fundamental design principles, an introduction to the contents of the framework, and application guidance. The framework comprises of 30 secondary indicators in six dimensions: Governance Structure and Policies, Strategy and Objectives, Ecosystem and Biodiversity Analysis, Risks and Opportunities, Performance Tracking and Evaluation, and Outlook. The application guidance also projects the Checklist and Self-Assessment – DPSIR Analysis Model, providing a reference for enterprises to understand and apply this biodiversity disclosure framework and a self-assessment model to improve biodiversity management capacity.
5. Case studies of biodiversity disclosure.
This section includes case studies and summaries on corporate and project biodiversity disclosure implementation.
6 . The summary and outlook on biodiversity disclosure.
This part includes a summary and recommendations based on the research analysis and questionnaire results; it provides recommendations from three dimensions: government and regulators, financial institutions, and enterprises.
7. The “+1” section analyzes the questionnaire results on biodiversity disclosure.
The research group investigated the market participants’ understanding of biodiversity dependencies on and impacts of their institutions, the expected difficulties of implementing the disclosure framework, and the support needed for further development.