Corporate Biodiversity Reporting

In this chapter we present an analysis of biodiversity reporting practice in a sample of leading UK and German companies in order to ascertain the quantity and quality of reporting in this crucially important and evolving area. As acknowledged in the introduction of this book, extensive academic research has focused on a wide range of features and models of social and environmental reporting (SER) but has tended to investigate SER at a general, overarching level. Until very recently there has been no specific focus on biodiversity reporting. We feel that as SER matures, it is necessary to study specific elements of SER in more detail, such as carbon reporting, greenhouse gas accounting and biodiversity reporting. There is a global crisis in biodiversity with Planet Earth entering a sixth period of mass extinction ¹ – but this time the extinction has been partly fuelled by human-induced climate change as argued in the latest report from the United Nations (UNEP, 2013). The scientific consensus is that there is a worldwide loss of biodiversity and a current trend towards mass extinction (Ehrlich, 1995). One estimation method suggests that given the rate of deforestation, we could be losing 10–25 thousand species each year, or the equivalent of 1–3 species per hour (May, Lawton and Stork, 1995). Indeed, with climate change the threats to biodiversity are gathering pace.