corsus explores biodiversity impacts of value chains to help SME reduce them

Together with WWF Germany and Systain Consulting, corsus is working on the project “Lieferkette und Biodiversität” (“Supply chain and biodiversity”) for the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN). Within the project, a tool is being developed to support particularly SME in tracking and minimising biodiversity risks along their supply chain.

The Anthropocene strongly impacts the planet as various metrics show. For instance, global resource consumption increased by 70% between 2000 and 2017. At the same time, the global extinction rate has increased to ten to one hundred times the average extinction rate of the last 10 million years. The loss of terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity poses an immense risk to the stability of our societies and thus to human well-being. In the current Global Risk Report of the World Economic Forum, biodiversity loss ranks third among global threats, along with the risk of extreme weather events and the failure to meet climate targets. The topics of biodiversity and sustainable production also play a role in the context of the globally adopted UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): While SDGs 14 and 15 aim to protect biodiversity on land and in water, SDG 12 aims to promote sustainable production and consumption. But how can companies source raw materials with the lowest possible biodiversity risk?

This question is important for companies because biodiversity risks in the supply chain can threaten their success or even their continued existence in multiple ways. In the course of the project, a tool will therefore be developed that enables companies to identify physical, regulatory as well as reputational and market risks in their supply chain at an early stage. Only when risks are known can they be adequately responded to and solutions developed.

corsus’s role in the project is to provide the scientific basis for the tool. You can find out more on our contribution in our project reference. There, you can also learn about our other projects.