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Japanese

Biodiversity and Private Sector Engagement

coral reef The combination of "business activities" and "biodiversity" may have been strange a while ago. But now the situation has changed a lot. In recent years, expectations concerning conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity towards business operators are increasing year by year, and so in the near future, business entities who do not make any activities on biodiversity in the near future may be left out of the market.

The 10th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 10) was held in Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture in 2010 and the "Aichi Target" that the world should address by 2020 for conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity was adopted.

Thining of a forestIt was a big step forward for the biodiversity activities to spread among Japanese companies. In September 2015 SDGs (sustainable development goals) were adopted at United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. Conservation of natural capital which is the foundation of society and economy is inseparable from realizing a sustainable society. Many domestic and overseas companies view social issues indicated by SDGs as business opportunities, and the movement introducing them into business strategies has already begun. There is a change also in the investor side. ESG investments exploiting environmental, social and governance information that does not appear in the financial statements for investment decisions are expanding and attracting attention as a new basis for evaluation to measure the investment value of companies. We are entering upon such an era where the achievement of SDGs is demanded, and attracting ESG investment is of enterprises are of great interest. It is therefore almost impossible to do business activities separately from the biodiversity issues.