If you’ve been around social media in recent weeks and inter­ested in nature con­ser­va­tion, you prob­a­bly have come across the Con­ser­va­tion Opti­mism Sum­mit (held in Lon­don, 20–22 April 2017). There has been a lot of excite­ment and pos­i­tivism. This, how­ever hasn’t pre­vented the orga­niz­ers from shed­ding some light also on the more uncom­fort­able side of our rela­tion to nature: when we’re exploit­ing ina­ture to ful­fill our hunger for resources and goods. Enti­tled “The future of cor­po­rate bio­di­ver­sity account­ing and dis­clo­sure” the ses­sion chaired by Prue Addi­son from the Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Cen­tre for Con­ser­va­tion Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­sity of Oxford set the focus on busi­ness and bio­di­ver­sity. More infor­ma­tion on the out­line as well as the atten­dees can be found below. To engage in the wieder dis­cus­sion check also on the web­site of the Con­ser­va­tion Opti­mism Sum­mit or fol­low the hash­tag #Con­ser­va­tionOp­ti­mism.

Ses­sion description

This ses­sion aims to pro­vide a plat­form to share the lat­est research and best prac­tice exam­ples of busi­ness’ involve­ment in bio­di­ver­sity con­ser­va­tion. This ses­sion will focus specif­i­cally on bio­di­ver­sity account­ing (e.g., the devel­op­ment of bio­di­ver­sity met­rics for busi­ness) and dis­clo­sure (e.g., report­ing on bio­di­ver­sity impacts in cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­ity reports and finan­cial reports), as many UK based busi­nesses, aca­d­e­mics and NGOs are under­tak­ing world-leading work in this area.

This ses­sion will be struc­tured as an inter­ac­tive panel dis­cus­sion and Q&A event. We will firstly focus on some of the pos­i­tive steps busi­nesses are cur­rently tak­ing to account for bio­di­ver­sity in their busi­ness, and some of the sci­en­tific advances help­ing busi­nesses do this. Pan­elist will then answer some more chal­leng­ing and for­ward think­ing ques­tions about where busi­nesses should be going for cor­po­rate bio­di­ver­sity account­ing and dis­clo­sure; and impor­tantly what steps they can take to go above and beyond mit­i­gat­ing their impacts to con­tribute to the con­ser­va­tion of biodiversity.

At this ses­sion you will be joined by busi­ness, NGO, and aca­d­e­mic rep­re­sen­ta­tives who are under­tak­ing world-leading work on cor­po­rate bio­di­ver­sity account­ing and dis­clo­sure. Our ses­sion will pro­vide a plat­form to net­work with your peers, share cur­rent ideas and best-practice, and debate the future direc­tion of cor­po­rate bio­di­ver­sity account­ing and dis­clo­sure. This ses­sion finally aims to ensure a strong and pos­i­tive mes­sage from the cor­po­rate sec­tor will be a part of the broader Con­ser­va­tion Opti­mism sum­mit dialogue.

This ses­sion is proudly spon­sored by the Nat­ural Envi­ron­ment Research Coun­cil, the UK’s largest fun­der of inde­pen­dent envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence, train­ing and innovation.

Ses­sion panelists

Prue Addi­son, Knowl­edge Exchange Fel­low and Post­doc­toral Researcher, Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Cen­tre for Con­ser­va­tion Sci­ence, Uni­ver­sity of Oxford
Julia Baker, Bio­di­ver­sity Tech­ni­cal Spe­cial­ist, Bal­four Beatty
Richard Barker, Pro­fes­sor of Account­ing, Saïd Busi­ness School, Uni­ver­sity of Oxford
Giu­lia Car­bone, Deputy Direc­tor, IUCN Global Busi­ness and Bio­di­ver­sity Pro­gramme
Helen Crow­ley, Head of Sus­tain­able Sourc­ing Inno­va­tion, Ker­ing
Chris Eves, Foresty Offi­cer, Zoo­log­i­cal Soci­ety of Lon­don
Clé­ment Feger, Post­doc­toral researcher, Uni­ver­sity of Cam­bridge Con­ser­va­tion Research Insti­tute and Luc Hoff­mann Insti­tute
Mar­tina di Fonzo, Post­doc­toral researcher, Cam­bridge Insti­tute for Sus­tain­abil­ity Lead­er­ship, Uni­ver­sity of Cam­r­bidge Con­ser­va­tion Research Insti­tute
Mark Gough, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Nat­ural Cap­i­tal Coali­tion
Pippa Howard, Pro­gramme Direc­tor, Cor­po­rate Part­ner­ships, Fauna & Flora Inter­na­tional
Keith Tuffley, CEO of The B Team
Bhaskar Vira, Found­ing Direc­tor of the Uni­ver­sity of Cam­bridge Con­ser­va­tion Research Insti­tute
Fran­cis Vorhies, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Earth­mind