Indian Business & Biodiversity Initiative

SITUATION

Concurrent to India’s Presidency of the Conference of Parties (COP) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Indian companies joined hands and addressed the critical issue of biodiversity loss under a national initiative. The India Business & Biodiversity Initiative (IBBI) serves as a national platform of businesses and its stakeholders for dialogue sharing and learning, ultimately leading to mainstreaming sustainable management of biological diversity into businesses.

OBJECTIVE

The project’s vision was to sensitise, guide and mentor Indian business organisations in biodiversity conservation and sustainable use related to their operations, across their value chain and beyond towards conservation of India’s biodiversity. GIZ’s Biodiversity Programme together with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and support from the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) launched the India Business and Biodiversity Initiative (IBBI) on the occasion of the International Day for Biological Diversity on 22nd May 2014 in New Delhi.

APPROACH

The aim of the project was to:

• IBBI has presently 27 signatories that range from Indian conglomerates such as TATA, ITC, Mahindra, and Wipro that represents a total annual turnover of more than €360 billion.
• Document, showcase and promote good business practices in India and globally.
• Advocate public policies supporting the business and biodiversity interface at national and international level.

ACHIEVEMENTS

• IBBI has presently 27 signatories that range from Indian conglomerates such as TATA, ITC, Mahindra, and Wipro that represents a total annual turnover of more than €360 billion.
• IBBI represents a variety of industries, including cement, steel, chemicals, power, information technology and consumer products among others. CEO’s of all the signatory companies have committed themselves to integrate biodiversity management into their operations.
• Two regional chapters (Western Chapter and Southern Chapter) have been established at Godrej and Wipro respectively. This shows the commitments of the signatories to take the topic further and reach out to other industry members.
• Biodiversity has been included as a separate domain in the CII annual Sustainability Award which has been part of CII since 2006. This essentially is a crucial step as all companies who go through the award process would need to report on their engagements and commitment to the cause of biodiversity conservation.
• Expert Group on Biodiversity Policy (EGBP) was established within IBBI that works together for policy advocacy on critical biodiversity related policy. The EGBP consists of representatives from companies and the chair of the group is a member of the IBBI Advisory group and reports to the chair of IBBI.
• IBBI initiative has become self-sustainable and has three full time staff at the secretariat which is led by the Deputy Director General of CII-ITC Center for Sustainable Development.
• IBBI has become a forerunner initiative within the CBD led Global Platform on Business and Biodiversity.
• The training course on biodiversity management for businesses has been institutionalised at the CII as a certified course. CII continued offering regular training to the employees of the private sector. IBBI also offers expert advice to the member companies on biodiversity risk assessment and preparing action plans for biodiversity management. The training and expert advice are paid services to the business that help IBBI achieving financial sustainability to continue the initiative.

CONTRIBUTION TO AGENDA 2030

By mainstreaming biodiversity and ecosystem services into the private sector (target 8.4 & 15.9) and through the business led multi-stakeholder platform that promotes private sector leadership in order to make businesses efficient and sustainable (target 9.4), the project contribute to both the economic and environmental part of the Agenda 2030.

RESOURCES

All publications, training materials and movies of this project can be accessed via the resource section on this website, by selecting the topic “Indian Business & Biodiversity Initiative”.

Here are Our Partners for the IBBI project.