On the ground at COP15: How business is getting to grips with biodiversity

The U.N. biodiversity conference known as COP15 ended earlier this week with a landmark agreement for nature, the Global Biodiversity Framework.   

In this episode of ESG Insider, we unpack the big takeaways from the conference through several on-the-ground interviews in Montreal. We speak to Laurence Pessez, Global Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at the big French bank BNP Paribas. We sit down with Simon Zadek, Executive Director of NatureFinance, a nonprofit focused on advancing the place of nature in decision-making across financial and capital markets. We talk to Linda Krueger, Director of Biodiversity and Infrastructure Policy at The Nature Conservancy, a global environmental nonprofit. And we hear from Tim Christophersen, Vice President for Climate Action at global technology company Salesforce.  

The business community has arrived at "the social tipping point of understanding that we cannot continue to just extract natural capital from Planet Earth without giving back," Tim tells us. And that realization is occurring "not only in the sustainability teams of companies, but in boardrooms with CEOs, with chief finance officers," Tim says. "We've never seen so much business interest in this topic."

We'd love to hear from you. To give us feedback on this episode or share ideas for future episodes, please contact hosts Lindsey Hall (lindsey.hall@spglobal.com) and Esther Whieldon (esther.whieldon@spglobal.com). 

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