Target 15:
Businesses Assess, Disclose and Re­duce Biodiversity-Related Risks and Negative Impacts

1. Regularly monitor, assess, and transparently disclose their risks, dependencies and impacts on biodiversity, including with requirements for all large as well as transnational companies and financial institutions along their operations, supply and value chains, and portfolios;
2. Provide information needed to consumers to promote sustainable consumption patterns;
3. Report on compliance with access and benefit-sharing regulations and measures, as applicable;

Introduction

Policy Proposals for National Implementation

• Introduce mandatory environmental due diligence process and environmental risk reporting for companies including biodiversity loss risks, for example, using the international framework developed by the Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), for their entire value chain
• Base all objectives and action alternatives for reducing consumption on fair distribution, respect of human rights and quality of life, and the intrinsic value of nature, including drawing inspiration from nature's own cycles, systems, and symbioses, where almost all resources are utilised with minimal waste.
• Enforce strict conditions and regulations for national companies that contribute to environmental destruction and pose risks to biodiversity conservation in another country or globally.
• Enable businesses to regularly assess, prevent and mitigate, monitor and transparently disclose their risks, dependencies, and impacts on biodiversity. Require all large and transnational companies and financial institutions to do so, including along their operations, supply and value chains, and portfolios.
• Require an assessment and disclosure process that considers nature-related risks, impacts, and dependencies, incorporating a meaningful human rights and stakeholder engagement approach as recommended by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

  Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights

• Recognise the important role environmental defenders play for biodiversity and fulfil the obligation of respecting, protecting and fulfilling their rights.
• Establish consistent and firm government regulations of the business and financial sectors.

Policy Proposals for Inter­national Implementation

• Require companies to conduct a due diligence process where they identify and address risks and harms to human rights and the environment across their global chains of activities.
• Promote transparency and expectations on information sharing about human rights and environmental due diligence in line with the EU sustainability reporting directive and other relevant international agreements.
• Actively engage and push for a global legally binding instrument on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to the environment, human rights and Indigenous Peoples’ rights. Such an instrument must include sanctions for companies that fail to respect the environment and human rights despite a proper conduction of an environmental and human rights due diligence. It should also give affected communities and environmental defenders access to justice.
• Push for high ambitions in international negotiations on circular economy, promoting strong collaboration to reduce consumption in a fair way.
• Require that negative impacts on affected communities are integrated into the assessment, prevention, mitigation and disclosure process: guiding principles should be drawn incorporating the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Affected communities and environmental defenders should be consulted and asked for their consent.
• Push for the adoption of a COP decision at COP16 obligating at the very least large and transnational companies as well as investment banks to monitor, assess and report, and disclose in a fully transparent manner, their impacts on biodiversity.