New protocol to help industry generate a positive impact on biodiversity
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New protocol to help industry generate a positive impact on biodiversity
Stephen Edwards/IUCN
Industries such as mining, forestry, and oil and gas have been trying for years to minimise their environmental and social impacts, but there is a growing expectation from civil society, regulators and investors that companies not only ‘do no harm’, but also make a positive contribution to the environment and society.
In many companies, projects follow procedures to avoid or minimise biodiversity impacts and restore biodiversity or offset impacts when these are unavoidable. This framework, known as the mitigation hierarchy, is increasingly used by companies and governments to improve environmental management and contribute to a net positive impact (NPI) or biodiversity net gain (BNG).
Following a NPI commitment by the mining company Rio Tinto, IUCN worked with the company to develop and trial a review protocol that could track its progress towards reaching NPI at an operational level. This protocol was tested at Rio Tinto operations in Australia, Mongolia and Madagascar.
Last update: 05 Jul 2019
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Context
Challenges addressed
A key challenge is keeping the review protocol simple enough so that it can be easily applied by companies while covering comprehensive and appropriate measurements.
In some cases, there may be a lack of biodiversity information to serve as a baseline for measurement but this should not be a constraint to progress as alternative assessment methods can be found. NGOs should work with governments to develop a more standardised approach to biodiversity assessment and management.
Restoration timeframes are uncertain, efforts may depend on wider biodiversity plans and it is not always possible, at least in the short term, to recreate complex natural habitats, but again this should not be an excuse for inertia.
Delivering biodiversity net gain takes time and needs continual planning, review, robust support systems and sufficient resources.
Location
Madagascar, Mongolia, Australia
East and South Africa
East Asia
Oceania
Process
Summary of the process
Collectively these building blocks show that developing and sustaining an effective NPI programme, calls for collaboration and consultation among diverse players. This demands excellent facilitation and an enabling environment to be provided by government and regulatory bodies for integrated conservation planning.
There needs to be a balanced involvement of internal and external stakeholders, alongside the scientific community, to help ensure that the approach developed is pragmatic.
NGOs have an important role to play in helping to create a level playing field. If good biodiversity management continues to be mostly the voluntary practice of a few companies, biodiversity will continue to be lost when sites abandoned by these companies are taken over by those that have no biodiversity management standards or policies.
Building Blocks
Corporate commitment and resourcing
Biodiversity net gain efforts often rely on a champion. This may be a company’s chief executive committed to using the approach. But if that person moves on, such commitment can be lost or superseded by other priorities. Therefore, biodiversity net gain must be embedded into a company’s mindset at all levels. Corporate implementation, communications and resourcing are critical and need to be framed within existing management, budgeting and reporting systems. An integrated approach to risk management is needed, meaning the environmental, community and social teams should work with core business staff to share expertise and understanding to help develop action plans that are holistic and resilient.
Enabling factors
Providing adequate finance, personnel and guidance is critical to biodiversity net gain initiatives. It is important to develop tools for easy implementation that embed such an approach into corporate recording and long-term planning.
When part of a regulatory and/or lender requirement, initiatives are more sustainable especially when embedded into wider plans and the arrangements are negotiated with local communities and regulatory authorities. Regulations and lender conditions are often strong motivators for maintaining the BNG approach.
Lesson learned
Building trust and developing relationships between the company, NGOs, government and communities takes time but is critical to success.
Evidence of the ‘business case’ for biodiversity net gain needs to be clear – whether it is driven by public demand, regulation or stakeholder expectations. A strong business case will help lock-in long-term commitment to the cost of implementing an initiative.
Pilot new approaches
New biodiversity net gain approaches need to be trialled and lessons communicated before rolling-out to other units within a company or promoted publicly. Establishing a community of practice to share lessons and address common challenges across the business or sector should facilitate wider implementation.
Testing the approach at several sites allows potential challenges to be addressed and the approach adapted early in the development of the programme. Once a project is implemented, regular ‘health checks’ should be carried out on sites to check progress and maintain momentum.
Enabling factors
Although it is not desirable that a programme relies on a single champion to succeed, it may be necessary to identify one person or group who can persuade their company to follow the BNG course and provide the stimulus until the approach is more firmly embedded.
Lesson learned
Allow for adaptation to special circumstances: Site-level challenges must be properly considered, especially given the vastly different natural, social and policy environments in which companies operate.
Involve host communities
Communities must be involved in planning and implementation when net positive impact activities might affect their daily lives or livelihoods. Land tenure aspects need to be addressed from the start, satisfying different stakeholder expectations and ensuring long-term sustainability.
The wider landscape and community needs and aspirations, along with national and regional conservation priorities must all be addressed within a company’s biodiversity management plan.
Enabling factors
A communication and engagement strategy will help ensure that all land users, landowners and government authorities understand the biodiversity management plan and have the opportunity to air concerns and contribute to its development.
Lesson learned
Approaches should be developed collaboratively, including input from communities, planning and operational teams, to ensure that plans are practical and properly resourced. NGOs must fully understand the operating environment of a business to identify strategies that have the best chance of success.
Impacts
As ongoing infrastructure development and resource extraction are inevitable to support economic growth, biodiversity net gain goals and safeguards are important to ensure that development is sustainable. A growing number of governments, businesses and organisations are adopting NPI-type policies and commitments, and international lenders are including NPI safeguards as part of their conditions. The IUCN Review Protocol for Biodiversity Net Gain contributes to a growing set of tools that can help business and governments safeguard nature.
IUCN is drawing on its network of government and NGO Members to promote the use of a BNG approach by providing technical support, new knowledge products and tools, and a platform for sharing lessons learned. The aim is to help business achieve a net gain for nature in their operations and at a landscape level.
The knowledge and experience gained in developing the protocol contributed to Rio Tinto’s overall strategy on biodiversity and the company is helping others integrate biodiversity into risk management and on-site management. IUCN is now helping other companies roll-out the protocol, including Newmont Mining and Black Mountain Mining.
The review protocol is now being used by several other companies worldwide, and the number of companies and governments committing to an NPI approach continues to grow.
Beneficiaries
The review protocol provides a framework to assess progress, share experience and lessons across a company or sector, meet lender and regulator demands and stakeholder expectations. It can also help sites with implementation challenges.
Sustainable Development Goals
SDG 12 – Responsible consumption and production
SDG 15 – Life on land
Story
Rio Tinto’s net positive impact strategy was launched at the 2004 IUCN World Conservation Congress and reiterated by the company’s chief executive at several forums, including the 2008 IUCN Congress.
At that time, the company’s position statements and guiding principles on biodiversity acknowledged that conservation and responsible management of biodiversity are important business and societal issues. Recognising that it did not have enough internal expertise to implement a NPI commitment, Rio Tinto enlisted the help of a number of NGOs, consultants and research bodies to advance the process, including a series of trials.
The most comprehensive of these was at Rio Tinto’s project site, QIT Madagascar Minerals (QMM), where the company worked with biodiversity specialists including: Flora and Fauna International (FFI); Birdlife International with its local partners such as Asity; The Biodiversity Consultancy (TBC); Missouri Botanical Gardens; Kew Gardens; Hardner and Gullison Associates; and a number of academics and other consultancies, as well as IUCN.
This collaboration produced an internal corporate guidance note in 2010, which included an overview of concepts and methods as a roadmap to achieving NPI and which has since undergone several revisions.
In addition to the QMM trial, IUCN helped with others at Oyu Tolgoi in Mongolia and Dampier Salt in Australia. In the meantime, a number of other sites, inspired by the initial launch of the NPI approach, also begun working towards it, exploring how to incorporate it into land use management plans and site operations.
Exploring how a NPI approach to biodiversity can enable the private sector to better manage biodiversity and contribute to global conservation was the focus of the NPI Alliance, which included IUCN, Rio Tinto, Shell and The Nature Conservancy. The Alliance published two papers on the business case and conservation case for NPI in 2016.
The review protocol is now being used by several other companies, and the governments' interest in NPI is also growing.
