How does ecological risk relate to commercial risk?
Healthy ecosystems are essential for long-term growth and businesses that ignore ecological risks face existential threats.
The October 2024 Royal Society conference underscored the urgent link between ecological and commercial risks, emphasising that business success depends on nature's health.
In 2021 Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta FRS published his review into the economics of biodiversity. This set out the many ways in which our economies, livelihoods, and well-being are fundamentally dependent on the natural world. It also demonstrated how our collective demands on nature exceed the natural world’s capacity to regenerate – pushing climate and ecosystems towards tipping points beyond which they will not provide the goods and services we rely on.
The Dasgupta Review prompted considerable business interest in what the analysis meant for them and their business models. On 3 – 4 October 2024 the Royal Society hosted a conference, chaired by Sir Partha, to help businesses understand the commercial risks they face due to ecological risks. Business leaders, scientists, academics and non-profits came together to discuss how trends in environmental decline are leading to new risks to business models and investments. The event took place just weeks before the biodiversity COP (COP16) opened in Cali, Colombia and the climate COP (COP29) began in Baku, Azerbaijan, where nature would also be firmly on the agenda.
The conference was designed to help business leaders grappling with ecological risks by addressing three questions:
- Why should I care?
- What should I care about?
- What can I do about it?
Speakers were united in the conclusion that there is already enough information and intelligence for businesses to act now on biodiversity loss.
Recordings of each session and all the other related materials are available to download.
Playlist day 1
Playlist day 2