Business internal ecosystem for stakeholder relations, information management and decision making

It is very important that the private sector integrate biodiversity so that its decisions do not compromise the future of ecosystems and that companies can continue to operate competitively.

I believe that it is necessary to consider three key elements that, from my experience in Mexico, we must take into account for the assessment

1. Relationship with Stakeholders. It is important to consider how private sector people identify and relate to their stakeholders in order to identify how material biodiversity is. We have seen that some companies do not identify biodiversity material because their stakeholders are oblivious about it. Many stakeholders do not understand what biodiversity is and therefore, they don´t  find the direct or indirect biodiversity relationship with the company's operations, and therefore, their sustainability strategies focus on more visible, more tangible issues. For example, energy saving, water saving. Reducing biodiversity footprint is highly intangible. Some companies are recognizing the importance of collaborating with companies in their sector for different sustainability issues. However, it is necessary for them to learn to collaborate with companies from other sectors whose operations are carried out in a given territorial space to develop common strategies around biodiversity and the sustainable management of landscapes.
2. Information management for decision making. It is necessary to understand how companies access data, translate said data into useful information for decision-making regarding operational, regulatory, reputational and financial risks. Businesses are in a rush to access information. Information on biodiversity is not necessarily available in business language. Information generators do not necessarily understand what companies are looking for. We have seen information services, such as IBAT, that help companies to identify, in a very superficial way, certain risks in terms of ecosystems and biodiversity, however, companies still require more people to translate that information for decision making. This requires time, additional costs and therefore, they do not integrate biodiversity in a timely manner. Large companies might have teams that can process information for decision making. Small and medium-sized companies do not. Therefore, the methodologies must be simple. It is preferable for biodiversity assessments to have a resasonable range of error, but to be carried out quickly, to making very precise but very expensive and time-consuming analyzes
3. Ecosystem for decision making within the company. Generally, companies, like the government, separate issues so that different work teams can manage them separately. Many companies identify biodiversity not as something related to their value chains. In many cases, it is through the area of corporate ​​social responsibility or philanthropy that companies address biodiversity issues. Purchasing and finance teams, if they do not have a clear direction from the CEO, they will not mainstream biodiversity into the business decision-making. We have seen companies with CEOs committed to ban deforestation from their value chains on the one hand and, on the other, purchasing teams with the aim of buying rural products at the lowest cost possible and with the risk of buying illegal forest products. On some occasions, the sustainability leader does not have a sufficient herarchic level to influence the decisions of the company. However, companies that make up sustainability committees, where all areas are represented, have better governance to adequately integrate biodiversity into decision-making.