Established in 2006 and coordinated by Orée — Entreprises, Territoires et Environnement, the Institut Français de la Biodiversité, and Veolia Environment, the working group on ‘integrating biodiversity into corporate strategies’ has been working on the development of a Business and Biodiversity Interdependency Indicator (B.B.I.C.) (1).

The aim of this composite indicator is to help companies better assess their direct and indirect relationship with biodiversity, as well as suggest potential pathways for integrating biodiversity into their strategies and daily activities.

Methodology
The Indicator is a self-assessment tool which can be used by companies in any sector and any size, operating nationally or internationally. The activities, products and services analyzed should be clearly identified ex ante and as comprehensively as possible. The company may then score the various criteria making up the evaluation grid (see table 1) according to an integer scale of 1 to 4, as follows: 1 — the firm is not concerned by the criterion; 2 — criterion of minor importance; 3 — important criterion; 4 — criterion critical to the firm. This self-evaluation requires the company to provide qualitative explanations of scores, so as to analyze the nature of its interdependency with biodiversity.

Testing the Indicator
The Indicator has been tested in 2007 through interviews with nineteen member companies of our working group (2). For each company, we plotted the results on a radar chart (see figure 1 for a hypothetical firm belonging to the mining industry). Each axis represents the mean value for scores for each group of criteria. This allows for a visual representation of the firm’s perceptions of its interactions with biodiversity.

Ultimately, the working group aims to better understand the diversity of perceptions within and between firms and across industries. We recognize of course the inherent limitations of a tool based on individual perceptions. Views can be biased or reflect only a partial understanding of all the issues at stake. For instance, one may not be fully aware of all the direct and indirect impacts of his company from a product life-cycle perspective. Assessing the company’s dependencies with respect to the constraints and advantages of living systems necessitates very precise understanding of the interactions between the company’s production processes and the evolution of living systems that are influenced (3). Such limitations, we believe, may be corrected at a later stage through further analysis and research.

A tool for identifying challenges
B.B.I.C. users rapidly realize that interactions between their company and biodiversity abound, explicitly or not, at multiple scales, from local industrial sites to internal commercial networks, from societal pressures, purchasing strategies, product innovation and marketing to in-house training. Though the Indicator is only at its first development stage, its use allows companies evaluate global and systemic biodiversity challenges. Various criteria may prove particularly difficult to understand or be simply unknown (e.g. C.1.3 — Bio-mimetism, C.1.2 — Ecological services), hence the need for more education on these critical issues. Furthermore, the pilot testing has revealed divergent or contradictory perceptions with respect to certain criteria. In order to improve the collective management of living systems at all suitable scales, a key challenge would be to make the diversity of perceptions with respect to the interactions between companies and biodiversity converge.

Interactions between companies
The Indicator can help frame many strategic issues, including with respect to technological and organizational innovation. With respect, for instance, to criteria C1.1 to C1.6, a company can explore the implications in terms of supply chains management and purchasing policies In the case of interdependencies with respect to the constraints and advantages of living systems, how can companies rethink their production processes so as to promote and valorize economically the variability and complexity of living systems? Such queries confirm the importance of the study of interactions between companies with respect to biodiversity: e.g. agribusiness, financial and insurance industries among many others; and their interactions with other economic agents, including public institutions and international organisations. From a perspective of co-evolution between companies and ecosystems, we would then need to work on the appropriate tool sets essential for the integration of biodiversity within the strategies of company networks

Strategic positioning
Though the Indicator as such does not aim to be an audit tool, it is confronted to the concrete needs of firms with respect to their strategic positioning. Indeed, the need for a legitimate and recognized set of indicators for business and biodiversity relationships is largely expressed. Given certain adaptations and emphasizing the interdependencies between firms and living systems, the Indicator may be useful to that end. It could allow companies (1) to position themselves by an initial comprehensive evaluation, (2) to identify innovative policies and practices for implementation within and between companies and (3) to develop the appropriate sets of performance indicators adapted to their specificities and their environmental management systems.

This composite indicator goes beyond a traditional approach which focuses on impact mitigation and compensation. Though recent works on the business case for biodiversity have highlighted companies’ dependencies on the diversity, variability and complexity of living systems, we intend to emphasize, in the light of the forthcoming COP-9 at Bonn in May, that the reciprocity is also true. For instance, eco-mimicry should be actively promoted for the design of industrial sites and supply chains, while research and development should target new products and services that valorize ecosystem variability and complexity. As we work towards building a Biodiversity Accountability Framework for business, to be published by November 2008, testing the Business and Biodiversity Interdependency Indicator is clearly a major step forward.

Joël Houdet is Biodiversity advisor and PhD student, Orée – Entreprises, territoires et environnement.

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(1) See Houdet J. & Weber J. (2007). “Rethinking business and biodiversity linkages”, Business2010, Vol. 2, No 3, pp. 30-31.
(2) Companies and public organizations which tested the Business and Biodiversity Interdependency Indicator include in alphabetical order: Accalmi – Alban Muller International, Carrefour, CDC Société Forestière, Compagnie Nationale du Rhône, Crédit Coopératif, Conseil Régional d’Ile-de-France, EDF, FCBA, Gaz de France, GSM – Italcimenti, LVMH, Phytorestore, SAF, Séché Eco-Industries, Solabia, Veolia Environment, Ville d’Angers, Yves Rocher, 3M. They belong to various industries: agribusiness, forestry, water services, energy, retailing, banking, mining, cosmetology, etc. I would like to thank Nadia Loury, Béatrice Bellini, Michel Trommetter and Jacques Weber for their help and valuable comments during this exercise.
(3) Living systems, from the level of genes to that of ecosystems, may present constraints and advantages for business. For instance, modern agriculture has decomposed complex ecosystem processes into simple sequences with optimized outputs through the use of production inputs from agro-business (e.g. out-of-ground crop production). Such practices have generated considerable ecological impacts.
(4) See Linton J.D., Klassen R. & Jayaraman V. (2007). “Sustainable supply chains: An introduction”. Journal of Operations Management, Vol. 25, pp. 1075-1082.
(5) See Porter T.B. (2006). “Coevolution as a research framework for organizations and the natural environment”. Organization & Environment, Vol. 19, pp. 479-504.