Research Seminar on Biodiversity and Extinction Accounting

Description

Presentation Abstract

Biodiversity can be described as the infrastructure that supports all life (Jones and Solomon, 2013). The immense pressure plastics are having on the oceans, along with the disappearance of rainforests, and land clearing for agricultural purposes, have all contributed to biodiversity loss and species extinction (Atkins and Maroun, 2018). All these issues have resulted in many years of human overexploitation of our planet and are recognised to be causing the sixth extinction period the planet is currently experiencing (Pievani, 2013; Kolbert, 2014; Russell et al., 2017; Atkins and Maroun, 2018). The World Economic Forum, 2015 considers biodiversity loss as one of the top ten global risks. Adler et al., (2018) reinforces that promoting biodiversity is critical to business survival as companies have a two-way relationship with biodiversity, including both the impact of companies on biodiversity, and the impact of biodiversity on companies. Therefore, companies must recognise that nature and ecosystems are of fundamental value either directly or indirectly linked to corporate activity (Atkins and Atkins, 2018; Adler et al., 2018; Bebbington and Unerman, 2018). By paying attention to biodiversity and ecosystem health, companies can recognize the risks and opportunities, anticipate new markets, mitigate their impacts, improve stakeholder engagement, and demonstrate leadership (Bebbington and Unerman, 2018). This study investigates the disclosure practices on Biodiversity/Extinction (B/E) and threatened species of the top 200 Fortune Global companies in 2012. 2014 and 2016. We use greenwashing theory to understand global companies’ motivation to report on B/E activities. We created and tested a regression model of the relationships between B/E disclosures and its determinants factors including; environmental performance, industry sector, country, assurance, environmental awards, presence of biodiversity partnership and species-related disclosure.

Period	4 Mar 2020
Held at	Brunel University, United Kingdom
Degree of Recognition	National