Minister of State for Heritage and Electoral Reform Malcolm Noonan TD and Minister of State for Land-Use & Biodiversity, Senator Pippa Hackett, have encouraged businesses to sign up to Business for Biodiversity, a new platform to guide them in taking action to tackle the biodiversity crisis.
The new platform will help businesses to measure, design and demonstrate their biodiversity impact, drawing on a network of expertise led by Natural Capital Ireland, the National Biodiversity Data Centre and Business in the Community Ireland.
How the platform works
The purpose of the platform is to encourage and incentivise Irish businesses to assess their impacts and dependencies on biodiversity. The overarching aim is to support implementation of Ireland’s National Biodiversity Action Plan, to halt harmful activities and promote the restoration and regeneration of Ireland’s natural heritage. Business For Biodiversity received Government seed funding for an initial three-year period, but from January onwards, the platform will put a paid membership model in place, once well-developed resources are established to offer support and networking opportunities to businesses, with a tiered fee system to suit every scale, from small-to-medium enterprises to large multi-nationals.
Some of the services to be offered by the platform include increasing understanding of biodiversity through educational webinars, facilitating networking and collaboration among participating companies, educating member companies around national policy on biodiversity and identifying nature-based solutions to address climate change and biodiversity loss.
Platform Development Manager for Business for Biodiversity, Lucy Gaffney acknowledged the important role that participating companies play in developing standards - for example, many businesses are now working with the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan to enhance their contribution to bees and other pollinators. She said the plan is to incorporate some of these existing certifications into Business for Biodiversity’s own scoring system to ensure streamlined compatibility between the various initiatives.
Biodiversity is the variety of life at various scales, from genes to species to habitats, with an estimated one million species facing extinction worldwide. The decline in pollinators vital for food production is a particularly worrying issue. Experts warn that biodiversity loss poses as much of a threat to our planet as climate change - and with healthy ecosystems and habitats needed for climate regulation and carbon storage, the two issues are closely interlinked.
The new platform fulfils one of the objectives set out in Ireland’s National Biodiversity Action Plan 2017-2021 and aims to develop as a resource that will positively transform the relationship between business and nature in Ireland.
