Business reporting on biodiversity and enhancement of conservation initiatives

Abstract

This article assesses 101 randomly selected companies for their biodiversity-related reporting of environmental performance indicators to meet the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G3.1 guideline requirement. To evaluate the reporting of environment performance indicators related to biodiversity, a 1–5 rating scale was developed where 5 ranked the highest. The maximum rating of 5 was obtained by 13% of the reporting companies. According to the GRI G3.1 guideline, environmental performance indicator number 12 (EN12) requests the companies to describe the ‘significant impacts of their activities, products, and services on biodiversity in protected areas and areas of high biodiversity value outside protected areas’. Most of the sampled companies (82%) reported this indicator. Environmental performance indicator number 15 (EN15) requests the companies to disclose the ‘number of IUCN Red List species and national conservation list species with habitats in areas affected by operations, by level of extinction risk’. This was the least-reported indicator by the surveyed companies (25%). Reporting of environmental performance indicators related to biodiversity, and initiatives based on GRI guidelines have been adopted with varying degrees of success by business organizations, but efforts are still required to understand the returns from the initiatives undertaken and reporting the returns earned.