Yesterday saw the launch of the TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) Report for Business. It’s a global study, initiated by the G8 and five major developing economies, focusing on ‘the global economic benefit of biological diversity, the costs of the loss of biodiversity and the failure to take protective measures versus the costs of effective conservation’.
The report’s leader Pavan Sukhdev began his summary: “Modern society’s predominant focus on market delivered components of well-being, and our almost total dependence on market prices to indicate value, means that we generally do not measure or manage economic values exchanged other than through markets. This is especially true of the public goods and services that comprise a large part of the benefits that nature provides humanity.”
The report goes on to identify how critical is has become to give an economic value to the currently largely unpriced ecosystem services that biodiversity provides us. For instance, using data from the Eliasch Review, it shows that through the services of re-creation, water regulation and carbon storage, ecosystems avoid GHG emissions by conserving forest and provide economic services worth $3.7 trillion (NPV).
Whilst measurement of biodiversity and ecosystem services is still challenging for business, it’s improving. This has been the major achievement of the CSR movement – getting companies thinking about their ‘external’ impacts, dependencies, risks and responses.
As far as we see it though, the challenge going forward is not one of reporting. (It’s no longer possible for a business that wants to succeed to ignore doing that.) The next challenge is about creating and evolving brands to offer what we call ‘brand ecosystems’ – proprietary models through which a brand identifies its unique environmental or social value, and brings it to life for the buying public in a way that’s relevant and compelling enough for them to ‘buy it’.
That’s the next phase. I guess it’s BSR – brand social response. It’s the turnkey to the ultimate nirvana: Brands representing business models offering net-positive outcomes.
