New research demonstrates that the world’s largest companies lack transparency around their biodiversity-related advocacy, while retaining membership of industry associations actively opposing critically needed policy. This represents both a systemic risk to global progress on biodiversity loss and a significant risk for companies' corporate governance of their environmental footprints
In the wake of the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework at the 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference, national and regional policymaking on biodiversity is accelerating. This effort by governments on biodiversity is being met with resistance from industries that feel they may be negatively affected, in particular by powerful industry associations which can claim to represent large portions of the economy. This systemic blockage mirrors that occurring on the climate policy agenda, where powerful cross-sector groups continue to stall progress.
Investor pressure is increasingly addressing this critical issue, and emerging parallel investor agenda on biodiversity looks likely to exert similar pressure on the corporate world to correct ‘misalignments’ between the advocacy activities of companies and their industry associations. This includes investor initiatives including UN PRI’s Spring and the Nature Action 100, both of which have expectations for companies to align their political engagement with global biodiversity goals.
Key findings include:
The majority of the companies have very limited public evidence on their biodiversity-related advocacy positions. However, lobbying disclosures in the US and EU indicate that the companies are more engaged than they appear; since 2018, the companies disclosed interest in 74 key biodiversity-related policies for which no transparent position could be found.
Four oil & gas companies (Chevron, BP, Shell, and ExxonMobil) exhibit the most oppositional engagement. This reflects limited but predominantly negative transparent direct engagement and oppositional indirect engagement via both sector-specific and cross-sector industry associations. Regulatory disclosures demonstrate engagement on numerous relevant policies - including on plastics, PFAS and endangered species - where no public positions could be found. TotalEnergies, by contrast, scores second in the analysis. TotalEnergies has limited but positive direct engagement and fewer memberships to oppositional industry associations than the other oil and gas companies assessed.
Walmart appears to be an outlier for its positive and active support for biodiversity-related policy. It shows a range of positive direct engagement on policy, including on land use change, overexploitation, and pollution. The remaining companies in the analysis from the automotive, IT, telecommunications and healthcare sectors show limited direct engagement on biodiversity loss, but hold memberships in powerful cross-sector industry associations opposing biodiversity policies.
While companies may have limited transparent positions on policy relevant to biodiversity loss, 95% are members of industry associations pushing to delay, dilute, and block critically needed biodiversity policy. These groups include major cross-sector associations such as the US Chamber of Commerce (16 of the 20 are members), BusinessEurope (13 of the 20 are members) and the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) (6 of 20 are members). Despite this apparent misalignment between company and industry association engagement, companies' disclosure on their indirect engagement is poor.
None of the 20 companies have published details on their industry associations' biodiversity policy positions, the groups' alignment with global biodiversity goals or any action taken as a result.
The report includes two cases studies, covering policy areas that have received significant industry association engagement in recent years. Case study 1 demonstrates significant ongoing opposition from global industry associations to policymakers' efforts to regulate the use of PFAS (so-called 'forever chemicals') in the US and the EU. If successful, this would have a significant negative impact on biodiversity given the toxic effects that can be caused by the accumulation of PFAS in wildlife and plants. Case study 2 illustrates how cross sector associations from several regions have pushed back on key elements of the EU's Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, on which negotiations are ongoing. The directive would create due diligence requirements relevant to overexploitation, deforestation and pollution.
