Companies around the world increasingly recognize that taking action to preserve nature is not only the right thing to do \u2013 it is also good for business.<\/p>\n
The ongoing decline in biodiversity poses significant risks for businesses, including potential supply chain disruptions, scarcity of raw materials, and increased operational costs. At the same time, businesses are uniquely positioned to halt and reverse biodiversity loss \u2013 and are making nature-positive solutions a strategic imperative in their practices and projects.<\/p>\n
The specialists in\u00a0WSP\u2019s Earth and Environment business line<\/a>\u00a0are working with their clients to integrate considerations of biodiversity and climate change into every stage of their projects, says Paula Bentham, senior principal ecologist at WSP in Canada, based in Alberta. \u201cOur clients and regulators recognize it\u2019s not enough to forecast the environmental impacts of a project<\/a>; they also see the importance of planning ahead \u2013 from the earliest phases of project design \u2013 to determine how they can remove or minimize any residual effects to biodiversity in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n With WSP\u2019s recent acquisitions that increased WSP in Canada to 12,000 employees, it is uniquely positioned to take the reins of the ever-growing demand for nature-positive projects.<\/p>\n Locally based with a global reach, the company has nearly 67,000 employees worldwide, 23,000 of whom work on environmental initiatives<\/a>. In natural resource<\/a> extraction, renewable energy, infrastructure, transportation, and more, the WSP team offers innovative practices and technologies designed to reduce project impacts on nature and maximize opportunities for recovery and restoration of biodiversity.<\/p>\n \u201cBiodiversity is declining faster on Earth than at any time in human history,\u201d says<\/a> Ms. Bentham. \u201cReports such as the\u00a0WWF Living Planet Report<\/a>\u00a0[2020] indicate that in the last several decades, we\u2019ve lost more biodiversity<\/a> than the planet did over 10 million years.\u201d<\/p>\n The science tells us that about 25 percent of the planet\u2019s assessed plant and animal species<\/a> are threatened by human actions, with a million species facing extinction, many within decades.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the evidence of the economic harms from nature\u2019s decline<\/a> is coming into sharper focus every year. According to a\u00a02020 study from the World Economic Forum<\/a>, $ 44 trillion of economic value generation \u2013 over half the world\u2019s total GDP \u2013 is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services and, as a result, exposed to risks from nature loss.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Businesses, governments<\/a>, and other stakeholders understand the dire nature of the threat, says Ms. Bentham, and are increasingly focused on finding new approaches and tools to get ahead of it.<\/p>\n \u201cA real shift has occurred over the past decade or so,\u201d she says, giving the example of federally regulated pipelines. \u201cProponents have had specific requirements to restore<\/a> the pipeline right-of-way to caribou habitat, where actions start as early as during construction. We have also delivered nature-positive offsets by reclaiming legacy habitats in Canada\u2019s caribou ranges that were degraded<\/a> by past developments when regulations were less rigorous.\u201d<\/p>\n The shift has also been evident to Olivier Joyal, executive vice-president of strategy and Execution, Earth and Environment for WSP in Canada, who\u2019s based in Montreal. \u201cIn the past, clients would usually call<\/a> our environmental team because they were in trouble \u2013 something was wrong on their site or they had an environmental problem to fix,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cToday, we are seeing a demand for a focus on biodiversity<\/a> and the environment at a level I have never seen in my 25-year career,\u201d Mr. Joyal notes. \u201cNow, it\u2019s not rare for the CEO of a mining company, for example, to request a meeting with our experts in biodiversity<\/a>. Company executives and boards want to have answers on how they can have positive impacts on nature through their operations.\u201d<\/p>\n More and more mechanisms in societies around the world are driving a move to bolster biodiversity protection and the achievement of other sustainability<\/a> goals. There are market drivers, such as reporting requirements related to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) contributions, as well as financial drivers; for example, to get World Bank funding<\/a>, an organization often has to have a plan for net gains in biodiversity for its project.<\/p>\n Perhaps the greatest influence to secure a better future for nature has been the\u00a0United Nations Biodiversity Conference<\/a> (COP15), hosted recently by Canada in Montreal. When it ended in December of 2022, the conference had secured a landmark\u202fagreement to address biodiversity loss, restore ecosystems<\/a>, and protect Indigenous rights.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The plan includes concrete measures to halt and reverse nature loss, including putting 30 percent of the planet and 30 percent of degraded ecosystems under protection<\/a> by 2030.<\/p>\n \u201cPaula and I were both on the ground during COP15, and we witnessed first-hand the enthusiasm for dramatic action. The drive to achieve 30 percent protection by 2030 galvanized people like never before,\u201d Mr. Joyal says.<\/p>\n He adds that businesses and other organizations were immediately eager to get WSP\u2019s advice on how to put these commitments<\/a> into action. \u201cAs soon as the conference ended, we started to receive more calls<\/a> from investors and pension funds, and from massive asset owners in the oil and gas sector and in mining, asking us where they should start.\u201d<\/p>\n With just a few days to go before the opening of the\u00a0United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai (COP28)<\/a>, the experts at WSP in Canada are optimistic. \u201cThe main target of the Paris Climate<\/a> Agreement, which is to contain the rise in temperatures, is still achievable,\u201d says Mr. Joyal.<\/p>\n \u201cWith our thousands of environmental experts across the globe, we are in an incredible position to bring innovation<\/a> to meet the sustainability needs of our clients,\u201d he adds. \u201cWith our global reach, we are able to bring the best minds together to solve nature and biodiversity and climate change challenges<\/a> in Canada and to optimize benefits for our clients and for the local communities in which we work.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Companies around the world increasingly recognize that taking action to preserve nature is not only the right thing to do \u2013 it is also good for business. The ongoing decline in biodiversity poses significant risks for businesses, including potential supply chain disruptions, scarcity of raw materials, and increased operational costs. At the same time, businesses […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8671,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8685"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8935,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8685\/revisions\/8935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Stepping up to meet the urgency of the moment<\/h3>\n
Drivers of progress<\/h3>\n