- Liverpool suffer Alisson injury blow
- Habosi helps Racing beat Vannes before Auradou's playing return
- Thousands march in London in support of Palestinians, 1 year after Oct 7
- Israel readying response to Iran missile attack
- Schutt, Mooney help Australia beat Sri Lanka in Women's T20 World Cup
- Liverpool extend Premier League lead with win at Palace
- Djokovic 'shakes rust off' to make third round of Shanghai Masters
- 'Imperfect' PSG fighting on all fronts - Luis Enrique
- Struggling Pakistan look to thwart adaptable England
- Child 'trampled to death' in asylum seekers' Channel crossing: minister
- Gauff fights back to set up Beijing final against Muchova
- Guardiola claims Premier League won't delay season for Man City
- Israel to mark October 7 attack as Gaza war spreads
- Gauff fights back to reach China Open final
- Recovering Stokes ruled out of first Pakistan Test
- Hezbollah battles troops on border as Israel pounds Lebanon
- Alcaraz, Sinner breeze into third round of Shanghai Masters
- Bagnaia wins Japan MotoGP sprint to cut Martin's lead
- Alcaraz breezes into third round of Shanghai Masters
- Gaza cultural heritage brought to light in Geneva
- 'Bullet for democracy': Trump returns to site of rally shooting
- Italy targets climate activists in 'anti-Gandhi' demo clampdown
- South Korean cult-horror series 'Hellbound' returns at BIFF
- Nepalis fear more floods as climate change melts glaciers
- Honduras arrests environmentalist's alleged murderer
- Padres pitcher Musgrove needs elbow surgery
- Supreme Court lets stand rules to curb mercury, methane emissions
- Boston beat Denver in NBA exhibition season opener, but Jokic says omens are good
- Chagos diaspora angry at lack of input on islands' fate
- Biden says 'not confident' of peaceful US election
- US trade chief defends tariff hikes when paired with investment
- Lukaku stars as Napoli beat Como to hold Serie A top spot
- Ohtani set for MLB playoff debut as Dodgers face Padres
- Pogba's drug ban cut to 18 months from four years
- Devine leads New Zealand to big win over India in Women's T20 World Cup
- Bosnia floods kill 16 people
- EU court blocks French ban on vegetable 'steak' labelling
- Prosecutors seek dismissal of rape charges against French rugby players
- Meta AI turns pictures into videos with sound
- Bolivia's Morales says claims he raped a minor are a 'lie'
- MLB Reds hire two-time champion Francona as manager
- Daniel Maldini receives first Italy call-up for Nations League
- US dockworkers return to ports after three-day strike
- Ancelotti points finger at Madrid's 'lack of intensity'
- Haiti reeling after 70 killed in gang attack
- Five Czech kids in hospital over TikTok 'piercing challenge'
- What happens next in Iran-Israel conflict?
- Country star Garth Brooks denies rape accusations
- Stubbs hits maiden century as South Africa make 343-4 against Ireland
- DR Congo to begin mpox vaccination campaign Saturday in east
At COP15, businesses urged to act for nature
Widely blamed for ravaging Earth's ecosystems, big businesses are nevertheless being turned to as key players in a deal to save nature at the COP15 biodiversity conference.
With hundreds of billions of dollars needed for the task, public funds can only fill part of the gap. Campaigners and experts at the talks are demanding companies act to reduce their impact -- and firms in turn are asking for clear rules of engagement.
Ministers at the meeting in Montreal are thrashing out a global agreement for the next decade to curb damage to Earth's forests, oceans and species -- with conservation and finance top of the agenda.
"One of the other things at stake in this COP is getting businesses involved," said Pierre Cannet of the Worldwide Fund for Nature, on the sidelines of the talks.
"Whatever the outcome of the summit, they will have to ask themselves how they can curb the fall in biodiversity."
Elizabeth Mrema, the head of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity that underpins COP15, said a record number of private-sector parties registered for this year's summit, where delegates are working on a new Global Biodiversity Framework.
"Clearly they've listened," she told AFP.
"They have understood or they are getting there now, understanding also the impact of their operations on nature, the nature biodiversity which we all depend on and (they) also depend (on) for their businesses," she added.
"If they are not part of the framework, their businesses will also suffer."
- Invest in nature -
Some $900 billion a year is needed to move from "an economy that devours nature to a neutral and then a positive economy," says Gilles Kleitz of the French state development agency AFD.
For this, "the role of businesses is fundamental," said Didier Babin, a researcher at Cirad, an institute that focuses on sustainable agriculture.
"More businesses have to be brought on board" to help fund the targets, he added. "They depend on biodiversity and they must invest more in the capital of nature. Nature needs to be thought of as an asset."
One of the targets in the framework under discussion at COP15 is a section aimed at obliging big companies and financial groups to measure and publish their impacts on the natural world and their exposure to it.
The World Economic Forum said in a 2020 report that more than half of global production depends heavily (15 percent) or moderately (37 percent) on nature and services related to it.
It calculated the value of businesses' exposure to degraded ecosystems at $44 trillion.
The report found that the construction sector was the most exposed with $4 trillion, followed by agriculture with $2.5 trillion and the food and drink industry with $1.4 trillion.
- Measuring biodiversity impact -
At COP15, a grouping of 330 businesses called Business for Nature is pushing for a uniform framework for all corporations to report their impacts and exposure.
With collective turnover of more than $1.5 trillion, they include big names such as Unilever, Ikea, Danone, BNP Paribas and Tata Steel.
"There will be no economy, there will be no business on a dead planet," said the grouping's executive director, Eva Zabey.
"And so now we need governments to adopt an ambitious global biodiversity framework that will provide the political certainty and it will require businesses to contribute."
Brune Poirson, director of sustainable development at the hotel group Accor, said COP15 "must be a key milestone" in this process.
"We need a framework with all the actors in the sector," she said.
Efforts are gaining pace to make companies disclose their contribution to the carbon emissions that drive climate change -- but relatively few companies currently declare their impact on the ecosystems that support all life.
"This summit needs to be a turning point in humanity's relationship with nature and to do so it needs to kick off fundamental changes in the way the economy works," said Eliot Whittington of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.
"More and more businesses and financial institutions are realizing how essential action on nature and biodiversity is, but they need governments to provide the right rules and incentives to solve market failures and make change possible."
C.Amaral--PC