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Biodiversity is essential to all life on Earth, including humans. Without a wide and vibrant range of animals, plants, fungi, and microorganisms, we will lose the ability of ecosystems to provide the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat – the basics of survival.
Biodiversity loss wrecks the ability of ecosystems to provide these essential services and threatens life on Earth. Corporations are driving the global crisis through habitat destruction, pollution, and unsustainable extraction practices, compromising the future of humanity, the planet, and themselves.
More than 50% of the global gross domestic product depends on nature. The ecosystem services that biodiversity provides – fresh water, pollination, productive soils, etc. – are fundamental to all corporations. This dependence means ecosystem health is a material risk to corporations, which opens the door for shareholder action.
Shareholders are paying attention.
NEW: Biodiversity Program
Business activities that directly or indirectly negatively impact nature pose reputational, legal, and financial risks to businesses. In focusing shareholder power on these risks, As You Sow seeks to convince companies to stop contributing to ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss and instead take action that protects both. Click here to view the program.
What We’re Doing
Safeguarding the Deep Seabed
The deep sea is one of the last remaining undisturbed ecosystems on the planet. Deep sea mining is an existential threat, but even under the most ambitious renewable energy scenario, demand for key metals can be met without mining the deep sea. We are seeking public commitments from corporate leaders in electric vehicles, technology, and battery manufacturing to not allow any material obtained from deep sea mining in their supply chains, beginning with Tesla and General Motors. Our goal is to evaporate the market for deep sea miners’ destructive products, collapsing the industry before it gets started.
Forest Victory
International Paper is a leading producer of packaging and pulp products, with much of its wood fiber almost certainly coming from forests with high conservation value. The company has now agreed to disclose sourcing areas and species information for its entire fiber supply chain, to adopt the Nature-related Financial Disclosures framework, and to conduct a science-based, geography-specific impact and dependency assessment.
Words Need Action
In one of the first biodiversity shareholder resolutions ever filed, we are asking Granite Construction shareholders to weigh in on its destructive quarry project in Utah. The industrial mining operation is planned for a protected recreational and watershed area, excavating as many as 634 acres of forest land and displacing elk, moose, black bears, mountain lions, golden eagles, and other species. The company has not participated in any local hearings, has not responded to the 27,000 signatures opposing the project, and is out of compliance with its own environmental goals – it says air quality, water use, ecological biodiversity, and community engagement are critical to its business. Our shareholder resolution goes to a vote in June.
Biodiversity loss
is inextricably woven into every issue we face, including – especially! – climate change.
Climate change is compromising marine, terrestrial, and freshwater ecosystems around the world, causing local species loss, increased disease, and mass mortality events, including the first climate-driven extinctions. As biodiversity loss diminishes ecosystem health, ecosystems are less able to prevent or reduce the impacts of flood, drought, and species imbalance, store carbon, and maintain healthy, productive soil. Healthy ecosystems are essential for limiting carbon emissions and adapting to an already changing climate.
The Planetary Boundaries framework identifies a set of nine global thresholds we cannot cross if we want to maintain a habitable Earth where humanity can continue to develop and thrive for generations. We have broken through six of those nine boundaries, including biodiversity loss. The risk is extreme and there is no time to lose – we must act, now.
