A new guide from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) has strengthened the bottom-line business case for valuing ecosystem services.

Representatives from over 60 organisations attended the launch at the World Resources Institute (WRI) of the WBCSD’s Guide to Corporate Ecosystem Valuation.

The WBCSD say the new Guide, which provides a framework for valuing ecosystem services, will provide a tool for businesses to strengthen their performance. Failure to properly recognize and manage ecosystem services costs corporations billions of dollars annually in lost natural capital, according to WBCSD’s James Griffiths.

“The Guide to Corporate Ecosystem Valuation (CEV) is a way we’re hoping companies get it right,” he said. “Economic growth that delivers on the social agenda and is based on ecological values. This is about leveraging the tremendous value of ecosystems.”

The Guide was motivated in part by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment’s conclusions that over half the benefits derived from intact ecosystems have been lost or degraded over a 50 year period.It builds on WRI’s and WBCSD’s Corporate Ecosystem Services Review, a method that helps business managers develop strategies that address new risks and opportunities resulting from the acceleration of ecosystem change.

Financial institutions are now concerned

Kyung-Ah Park, Managing Director of Goldman Sachs’ Center for Environmental Markets, used her keynote address to underscore the guide’s relevance for business in a world of depleting resources.

“Almost all financial institutions are now concerned with this issue,” she said. “A healthy environment is the foundation for a strong and sustainable economy. A key challenge for us is to manage the competing human demands [on resources] without undermining crucial ecosystem functions.”

Guide roadtested on UK wetlands restoration project by Holcim

WRI, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and WBCSD have already collaborated to road test the guide with 14 companies. Erica Guerra from Holcim, whose Corporate Ecosystem Valuation road test examined the restoration of wetlands in the United Kingdom, commented:

“Our mission is to be the most respected company in our sector."

”Our approach is not to be philanthropic, we don’t want to just write a check. We want to engage with the communities we operate in.”

Holcim’s project achieved 1.4 million pounds in benefits to the company and the local community.

Mark Weick of Dow emphasized the Guide’s benefit to a company’s bottom line. “[Dow uses a lot of energy, something like a medium-sized OPEC member. So we’ve been very interested in energy efficiency. But we recognized that we weren’t being efficient with our ecosystem services. We’re making sure we can value ecosystem services properly, not only today, but in the future."

The guiding concept of the Guide to Corporate Ecosystem Valuation is that businesses both depend on and affect the ecosystems in which they operate. The Guide is a companion report to the Corporate Ecosystem Services Review, published by WRI, WBCSD and the Meridian Institute, which provides guidelines on business risks and opportunities arising from ecosystem change.