The European Sustainability Reporting Standard (ESRS E4) is an innovation intended to protect biodiversity. For many companies though this represents a major challenge: As part of their sustainability reporting, they must now also disclose the impacts, opportunities and risks regarding biodiversity and ecosystems that are rooted in their corporate management. To this end, the guideline requires a comprehensive statement.
This regulation is a particular burden for small and medium-sized companies. However, it also offers new opportunities to advance social-ecological change within the economy. Companies can make a significant contribution to the preservation of biological diversity. This applies in particular to the food industry, whose procurement, production and distribution largely depend on the quality of biological diversity while in turn having a significant influence on it.
“Business for Biodiversity”: Research team breaks new ground
This shows that there is great potential for preserving biodiversity as a result of modified business practices. The new regulation might also increase the competitiveness of companies if, for example, investors increasingly demand that companies transparently present the impact of their business processes on biodiversity. For such changes, employees must implement the new legal obligations in practice which requires successful learning processes as well as the development of new skills and a growing awareness of the importance of biodiversity. The research project “Business for Biodiversity”, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, is accompanying this Europe-wide, regulation-driven transformation process, which was initiated by the introduction of the reporting standard ESRS E4. Due to its novelty, this process has so far hardly been researched. Therefore, the project team, headed by ISOE in cooperation with UFZ (Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research) is breaking new ground.
Maintaining biodiversity: new approaches for in-house measures
In the period up to June 2027, the research team is aiming to examine scientific findings on the effectiveness of instruments that measure the food industry’s impact on biodiversity. It has also set out to demonstrate how biodiversity-friendly action in companies can be strengthened through internal measures that go beyond the reporting obligations. To this end, the team is closely cooperating with companies as part of so-called Transformation Labs (T-Labs) to analyze how to effectively shape and implement measures in order to promote biodiversity.
The aim is to open up new ways of thinking and spaces for transformative change towards biodiversity-friendly procurement, production and marketing in the German food industry. To this end, methods of natural and social science are combined and will include, for example, impact assessments, surveys, interviews, and workshops.
About the project
https://www.isoe.de/nc/forschung/projekte/project/business-for-biodiversity/
Scientific contact
Prof. Dr. Flurina Schneider
Tel. +49 69 7076919-0
flurina.schneider(at)isoe.de
www.isoe.de
Press contact
Melanie Neugart
Tel. +49 69 707 6919-51
melanie.neugart(at)isoe.de
www.isoe.de