The working group serves as a dialogue platform to find better solutions for biodiversity.
The chair is made up of French IUCN Committee teams and an President is elected usually among the business partners for a three-year mandate. The President shares with the IUCN team the concerns of businesses in order to guarantee a relevant agenda.
The dialogue is reinforced first through a virtual meeting to agree on the yearly agenda based on a chair’s proposal, and then complemented by two face-to-face meetings per year. An improvement the last years has been the organization of sites visits on a voluntary basis from our business partners to learn from each other and confront the practices through concrete actions. It gives an insight on the replicable actions as well as the context-specific ones. According to the needs, more meetings and exchanges can be organised throughout the year.
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Frequent meetings and exchanges: face-to-face meetings, on-site visits, phone calls, e-mails
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Bi-monthly newsletter, with space given to the members to share their initiatives
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Diversity of members: scientists, NGOs, business biodiversity managers, protected areas managers, government representatives from the ministry of the ecology, representatives from the new governmental agency for biodiversity, international representatives of IUCN
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Trust and transparency between members
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The confidence built with the business partners thanks to long-term partnerships enhance a fruitful participation among the working group members based on co-construction.
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It is essential not only to engage all relevant stakeholders, but also to have an IUCN internal dialogue without companies to define risks and opportunities beforehand.
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It is important to have an appointed focal point who agrees the agenda of the meetings and animates the discussions. The focal point should support working group members’ initiatives to put on the agenda their insights, struggles and solutions to deal with biodiversity issues that are raised.
- A diverse multi-stakeholder group ensures that different views are expressed and results will be widely shared and accepted in order to co-create solutions. The business representatives in the working group are specialized in biodiversity. A next step would include business members coming from non-environmental departments, such as the purchase department to further incorporate biodiversity issues in the whole company.