Date: 08 Jun 2022
New platform to help businesses to take action for biodiversity
Minister of State for Heritage and Electoral Reform, Malcolm Noonan, and Minister of State for Land-Use and Biodiversity, Senator Pippa Hackett, today (8th June 2022) encouraged businesses to sign up to Business for Biodiversity, a new platform to guide them in taking action to tackle the biodiversity crisis.
Backed by the National Parks and Wildlife Service of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine the platform was launched today at the National Biodiversity Conference 2022 in Dublin Castle. The new platform will help businesses to measure, design and demonstrate their biodiversity impact, drawing on a network of expertise led by Natural Capital Ireland, the National Biodiversity Data Centre and Business in the Community Ireland.
How the platform works
The purpose of the platform is to encourage and incentivise Irish businesses to assess their impacts and dependencies on biodiversity. The overarching aim is to support implementation of Ireland’s National Biodiversity Action Plan, to halt harmful activities and promote the restoration and regeneration of Ireland’s natural heritage. Business For Biodiversity received government seed funding for an initial 3-year period, but from January onwards, the platform will put a paid membership model in place, once well-developed resources are established to offer support and networking opportunities to businesses, with a tiered fee system to suit every scale, from small-to-medium enterprises to large multi-nationals.
Some of the services to be offered by the platform include increasing understanding of biodiversity through educational webinars, facilitating networking and collaboration among participating companies, educating member companies around national policy on biodiversity and identifying nature-based solutions to address climate change and biodiversity loss.
Platform Development Manager for Business for Biodiversity, Lucy Gaffney today acknowledged the important role that participating companies play in developing standards - for example, many businesses are now working with the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan to enhance their contribution to bees and other pollinators. She said the plan is to incorporate some of these existing certifications into Business for Biodiversity’s own scoring system to ensure streamlined compatibility between the various initiatives.
Visit www.businessforbiodiversity.ie for more information and to sign up to participate.