Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
6
Business has to earn its license to operate, innovate and grow. Accountability,
ethics, transparency, social and environmental responsibility and trust are basic
prerequisites for successful business and sustainable development.
7
Innovation and technology development are crucial to sustainable development.
8
Eco-efficiency—combining environmental and economic operational excellence
to deliver goods and services with lower external impacts and higher quality-of-
life benefits.
9
Ecosystems in balance are a prerequisite for business. Business cannot function
if ecosystems and the services they deliver, such as water, biodiversity, food, fiber
and climate, are degraded.
10
Cooperation beats confrontation. Sustainable development challenges are huge
and require contributions from all parties—governments, business, civil societies
and international bodies.
These points mirror the standpoints of business, but all of the details could also
be formulated from environmental or social point of views, and it would not be much
different. The prerequisite is a healthy balance, accountability, transparency and ethics,
as well as a practice of decision making based on the newest scientific results and
knowledge.
In addition to the ecological aspect, the economic approach may cause an increased
value to be assigned to land and nature and considered when making decisions. There
are some priority land types which need reevaluation and more care such as riparian
and wetland systems or marginal farmland which is abandoned in favor of carbon
or biodiversity credits. Since business depends on services provided by the ecosys-
tem, business risk includes ecosystem-related risks. These include operational risks
(resource scarcity), regulatory and legal risks (penalties), market and product risks
as well as reputational (NGOs' movements against certain products), and financing
risks (bank policy considering sustainability issues). The European TEEB (2007) initia-
tive intends to evaluate the costs of the loss of biodiversity and the associated decline in
ecosystem services world-wide. Ecological and Economic Foundations (TEEB, 2010) is
to provide the conceptual foundation to link economics and ecology. The study deals
with valuating ecosystem services, as well as issues related to economic discounting. It
quantifies the costs of inaction, examines the macroeconomic dimension of ecosystem
services loss and improves our understanding of the economic costs of biodiversity
loss and ecosystem degradation. Its seven chapters summarize the theoretical basis for
valuating ecosystem diversity and services, and enlist a wide variety of ecosystem indi-
cators. These indicators should be considered instead of a small subset of ecosystem
processes and components that are priced and incorporated in today's transactions as
commodities or services.
Monetizing ecosystem and ecosystem services may seem controversial when com-
pared to a more holistic “green thinking'' which aims to change the present value system
and include environmental and social issues in addition to the economic priorities. A
practical argument in favor of the monetizing tool is that managers, decision makers
and today's citizens understand only those values which have a price. The Guardian's
blog writes: “Putting a price on nature can't be worse than giving it all away for free''
(Carrington, 2011). In this spirit organizations and countries following good environ-
mental practice try to determine the real value of the ecosystem and its services: e.g.,
Search WWH ::
Custom Search