Following the publication of the EU Biodiversity Strategy, the EU B@B Platform is happy to announce its relaunch as an initial step to implement the strategy.

The EU Biodiversity Strategy highlights that, “industry and business have an impact on nature, but they also produce the important innovations, partnerships and expertise that can help address biodiversity loss”. The EU B@B Platform is already helping businesses understand their impact on nature and make decisions to stop biodiversity loss.

But more needs to be done to further encourage uptake of biodiversity among business decision-makers and raise awareness across a larger group of enterprises. Addressing the challenges and interests identified in the survey conducted among its members in early 2020 the EU B@B Platform intends to support a broad business and biodiversity movement.

Going forward we will continue to build smart partnerships within and outside the biodiversity and natural capital community, reinforce the business case for biodiversity and natural capital inclusion, tailor our engagement to different business profiles, and strengthen the dialogue between the Platform’s members and EU policymakers.

The new changes aim to make the Platform more relevant to the needs of our community and highlight the distinguishing features of the B@B Platform. As part of the relaunch the Platform is reorganised into three new workstreams focusing on Methods, Pioneers and Mainstreaming. We are moving away from the current thematic approach to a functional approach to better respond to the needs of our different business members:

• Helping companies identify best practice guidance and tools available to support informed business decisions related to biodiversity and natural capital (workstream Methods).
• Facilitating dialogue and cooperation between pioneering financial institutions and businesses to gain deeper understanding from practice, and identify opportunities and solutions to scale up biodiversity considerations in corporate decision-making (workstream Pioneers).
• Promoting the integration of biodiversity concerns within the decision-making processes of a growing number of businesses and financial institutions across Europe (workstream Mainstreaming).

We cannot ignore the context of the relaunch – as the COVID-19 public health crisis unfolds across the world, the threats of climate crisis and biodiversity loss are becoming ever more prescient. Both the crisis and countries’ abilities to handle its most immediate effects have demonstrated that the current economic order based on over-consumption, infinite growth and strong disregard for nature and the climate are unsustainable in the long run.

As highlighted by the European Commission, “the EU Biodiversity Strategy is a central element of the EU's recovery plan, crucial to preventing and building resilience to future outbreaks and providing immediate business and investment opportunities for restoring the EU's economy. It also aims to make biodiversity considerations an integral part of EU’s overall economic growth strategy”.

The B@B Platform will play an important role in ensuring that protecting biodiversity is a key goal of the recovery and helping businesses and financial institutions integrate biodiversity and natural capital considerations into their new business practices.