CSR Voice: Ireland on Protecting Biodiversity
CSR Voice is the new blog series dedicated to exploring key global sustainability issues locally, together with CSR Europe’s National Partner Organisations.
This June we approach the 50th anniversary of the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment - the first world conference to have placed environmental issues at the forefront of international concerns, marking the start of a dialogue between industrialized and developing countries on the link between economic growth, the pollution of the air, water, and oceans and the well-being of people around the world.
For the occasion, we sat down with Cillian McMahon, Corporate Responsibility Adviser at Business in the Community Ireland, to zoom in on the threats to biodiversity in Ireland and how companies are taking actions to preserve the natural world.
What is Ireland’s approach to biodiversity preservation?
There have been many notable challenges when it comes to biodiversity preservation in Ireland. Ireland is often marketed abroad for its ‘green’ image, but this is a major misconception. Industrialised agriculture and mono-culture crop and tree plantations have had a catastrophic impact on Ireland’s landscape. 85% of Ireland’s internationally-important habitats are in unfavourable status and over 50% of rivers and lakes are not in satisfactory ecological health. A report by the National Biodiversity Forum found that the Biodiversity Action Plan 2017-2021 has had limited success in terms of stopping the decline of biodiversity in Ireland. The report also found that biodiversity protection in Ireland is hampered by inadequate funding and the lack of a single coordinated national environmental policy.
However, despite the biodiversity challenges outlined above, there have been some noteworthy successes when it comes to biodiversity preservation in Ireland. The All-Ireland Pollinator Plan is an initiative run by the National Biodiversity Data Centre which brings together farmers, local authorities, schools, gardeners, and businesses to try to create an Ireland where pollinators can survive and thrive. The All-Ireland Pollinator Plan 2015-2020 achieved considerable impact and delivered hundreds of conservation projects around the country.
In recent months there has been a renewed emphasis placed on biodiversity preservation in Ireland and large scale biodiversity enhancement projects are planned by the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) and Coillte (The State Forestry Company).
What are the challenges that companies are facing when they want to address biodiversity pressure points along their supply chain?
While many companies in Ireland have been successful in undertaking biodiversity actions on their own sites, addressing biodiversity in their supply chain remains a challenge. Most companies in Ireland do not fully understand their impacts and dependencies on biodiversity, and in many cases major biodiversity risks occur in their supply chain.
The lack of tools and guidance out there to help companies address biodiversity in their supply chains is another challenge. When it comes to carbon management, companies can use the Green House Gas Protocol (Scope 1,2,3) but a similar framework for biodiversity does not exist.
As BITCI how are you supporting businesses on this topic? Could you share some success stories of companies’ approaches to biodiversity?
Through our engagement with our member companies, we found that no matter what sector they operate in, they struggled to understand their role when it came to biodiversity and the impact they had. We saw this as an opportunity to shed a light on the role that business could play and over the last number of years, we have rolled out a number of tools to help companies broaden their understanding of biodiversity.
Some highlights include:
Our bi-annual Biodiversity Learning Network
Several of our member companies have truly embraced biodiversity and have undertaken a wide variety of initiatives such as Intel who integrated biodiversity into their environmental management system or Cook Medical and Janssen Supply Chain who have created dedicated spaces on their sites for biodiversity enhancement projects. Several of our members have installed bug hotels and beehives on their sites while also educating their employees on the importance of biodiversity.
What's your take on the work done by the European Commission to address biodiversity concerns and how companies will have to report on their efforts?
I very much welcome the ambitious biodiversity targets set out in the European Commission’s Biodiversity Strategy such as maintaining 30% of all land and sea for protected areas and reducing the use of chemical pesticides by 2030. Perhaps, it is still being formulated but I have yet to see clear evidence of what role business can play in achieving these targets e.g. how can a company’s onsite biodiversity protection measures contribute and be credited to the 30% protected land goal or how will the reduction in pesticide use be monitored.
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