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Biodiversity does not exist in a vacuum. Alongside the actions of communities, the scientific breakthroughs, and the opportunities for rewilding spurred by political change, there is also a role for business to play in all of this. It’s painfully apparent that businesses can’t continue to grow sustainably at the level they are doing now and reach their carbon goals. Ultimately, business leaders need to seriously consider how they can protect the environment going forward, and in particular, Earth’s oceans.
To that end, we brought together leading voices from across the business, philanthropic, and financial sectors to help shine a light on the role that business can play in protecting ocean biodiversity now and in the future. These three individuals use their different platforms to pursue sustainable development in the corporate world.
Dax Dasilva is the former CEO of Lightspeed Commerce and the founder of the Age of Union Alliance, a non-profit committed to conservation that funds climate-focused projects around the world. Jan Bebbington is an academic accountant who focuses on how companies can address the ecological impacts and progress to sustainable development. In her work, she consults with companies and holds them to account. And Nico Freudiger’s watch company, ID Gèneve Watches, develops sustainable watches made from what he describes as “circular materials,” which are materials like plastic or metal that have been recycled to create a brand new product.
It’s scary to be open and transparent about what you do.
Together, they want to change the conversation around biodiversity and restoration projects to one of opportunity and aspiration. “When you talk about things that can be done and you show wins, everybody’s stance changes,” Dasilva says.
We spoke to the three experts about their vision for business and biodiversity, and on the most promising opportunities for businesses to pursue today to safeguard their future and the environment.
I want to start by asking all of you to tell us about your involvement in biodiversity now, and the restoration efforts you are part of. Jan, can you tell us about your work at Lancaster University?
Jan Bebbington: I’m director of something called the Pentland Centre for Sustainability and Business. We look at businesses and how they’re championing sustainable development outcomes. Corporations are undertaking support for biodiversity restoration. Some of this is in a philanthropic sense. But at Lancaster University, we’re doing a project together with our ecologists to look at how businesses are addressing restoration in their own line of work, either because they rely on the natural environment—so they’re using restoration to make sure they can continue their business—or because they have impact upon the environment, and they have decided that restoring it is part of their deal.
So one of the things that we did is we looked at the 100 largest companies listed on the Forbes 500 across 10 sectors. And all of them were providing some information about their environmental attractions, while 66 percent of them told you about their restoration activities. So we know on paper now that companies are getting involved in restoration and producing—most likely—good outcomes from it. Because here’s the thing: When we asked them about something they were doing, do you monitor it? Only 34 percent said yes, we monitor it, and just 4 percent produced information that might allow someone to check their work. I’d like to take that 4 percent to 100 percent. It’s not to say that people are doing bad things—we just don’t know what they are doing. There’s a downside to not knowing what corporations are doing, when they might be doing fabulously interesting and important things.
Dax, the same question to you: What is your background in biodiversity?
Dax Dasilva: So I come from the business and tech world. I founded a company called Lightspeed in 2005. We do retail and hospitality software, as well as e-commerce software. I took the company public on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange and it grew to where it is today—it’s 3,000 people now. I transitioned from being the CEO for about 16 years to the chairman just last February. At that point, I started the Age of Union, which is a conservation organization. And while that’s not my full-time job and I’m new to the conservation space, I’m really enjoying it.
I grew up in the beauty of British Columbia and in Canada, and I became a conservationist when I was 17. I watched the old growth forests being cut down and I joined those protests, so I knew, even though I’d started computer programming at 13, I knew I’d be coming back to conservation. So I took $40 million in 2021 and put it across 10 “boots on the ground” conservation projects.
There are these incredible changemakers at the heart of these projects, including local indigenous leaders, who, if they can do the amount of things they are able to do with so few resources, I think that should inspire everybody to know they are able to make this kind of change. It’s not time to give up on the planet. Individuals have this great ability to really move the needle on the environment. And so collectively, I think we can do it.
Film has become a really big part of telling the stories of these projects. We’ve had some early success there, too: One of our early films just won an Emmy for Best Nature Documentary. The film was being shot around one of our projects called Wildcat. And I just came back from the Amazon with Jane Goodall. We’re working on two different films with a couple of filmmakers. I love conservation work, and it is exciting, but I also love telling the story of what’s possible for nature.
And finally, Nicholas?
Nicholas Freudiger: I’m one of the three co-founders of ID Gèneve Watches. So ID stands for a new identity in the world of luxury. When I talk about Swiss-made watches, what usually comes to mind is quality, wealth, and eliteness. But we have built the first impact-negative watch brand, only using circular materials. So for example, we have launched a watch that uses zero mining materials. We use 100 percent recycled stainless steel sourced locally that has a far lower impact than the industry average. I strongly believe that the private sector can act to bring about a transition in industry to sustainability, especially startups.
It’s not time to give up on the planet. Individuals can really move the needle on the environment.
What are the most promising opportunities for businesses, and for business owners and founders and CEOs, to help them believe in restoration? And is there any way we can make that even more attractive?
Bebbington: I have two promising things. Firstly, I think corporations should be less shy. Your accounting and reporting isn’t very sexy. But providing corporate reports and transparency about actions has three really important effects. The first effect is that it gives accountability to people who may have given you money or allowed you to operate in their communities, because you will have an impact on their lives, the species they might depend on, or the nature of the ecosystems they live in. The second thing about reporting is that it helps you articulate what you are doing, and that helps you to know if you’re doing the right thing. Corporate reporting forces you to be considered, self-conscious, and really think about what you are going to say. The thing that formal reporting does is it allows people to meet you, to find out what you are doing. And that is really energizing.
It’s scary to be open and transparent about what you do. Maybe you think that your head is going to get shot off if you put it above the parapet. But invariably, with corporations that are open and have well-founded projects backed up with data, people are receptive and even offer to help.
The second thing that I think is really possible is that in our work, we’ve integrated the principles of restoration science into our recommendations for what you might choose to disclose as a company. And those two things—reporting, and integrating restoration science—can work together.
Dasilva: When I came into investing in conservation, I looked at many different groups doing the work. But some of those boots-on-the-ground, grassroots projects that Re:wild supports, and that we really believe in—these are folks that are doing a lot of their work with almost no budget. Give them an annual budget and they can hire a team that can do five years of planning. I recognize the entrepreneurialism in these projects. I was able to mentor some of these conservationists and contribute a business perspective. But it was exciting to see them grow a team and go from a string of losses on the ground to a string of wins. That has a big influence not just on the project, but also in the surrounding communities as they see the conservation project thrive.
There are some incredible stories inside these projects. For example, one of our projects is in Trinidad and it focuses on leatherback turtles. Leatherback turtles migrate from the Caribbean islands all the way to Canada where they eat the jellyfish and come back. This 100-million-year-old species, a contemporary of the T. Rex, is in so much trouble. But this woman, Suzanne, grew up in Trinidad and she grew up seeing these turtles nest. But then she saw young men poaching these turtles and stealing the eggs. And so she started to fight with them right there on the beach. She turned that whole community around from a poaching community to a conservation community. It’s a complete transformation. If businesses want to support real progress, they need to get behind these kinds of folks.
I love that, but how are they making money with this alternative? At the end of the day, all the consumer wants is to know what’s in it for them.
Dasilva: So it has taken years and it’s not worked in lots of other places. What Suzanne did was she was also a social worker—she got these young men arrested at one point but then she retrained them and she helped this whole town make a transformation through ecotourism and tried to make this beach as exciting a destination in Trinidad as the Carnival, so people come for the nesting season. You know, these turtles are the size of a Kia, they’re massive. I’ve never seen anything like it. And you can go on the beaches at night with her guides and a red light and see this incredible creature dig their nests. So she created something where everybody can get involved and be as proud of the turtles as they are of Carnival.
Freudiger: Another point I would add is the need for traceability. As a startup, we focused on mapping the ecosystem around a watch. And we discovered that we’re touching so many different industries. So as entrepreneurs, we want to make sure that we’re creating a solution that is better than the status quo. And so we just put out a call for the watchmaking industry to have less mining extraction. About 50 percent of the gold mined worldwide is for the Swiss watchmaking industry. And we’re saying today you can wear something else on your wrist, something that is more positive. We need to lead by example. If Louis Vuitton or Rolex do something, then it will cascade down and influence other industries to act, too.
Are there any specific innovations or technology that you know of, or approaches organizations have employed that have proven successful at restoring biodiversity, and particularly, island and shore environments?
Dasilva: With regards to the oceans, there’s a greater ability now for anyone to produce and distribute film or social media videos than ever before. The barrier for entry has come way down and you can make a lot of change with one film. We did a short film called Caught, which is about 10,000 dolphins dying in the French fishing fleet’s nets. The trawlers come through and just vacuum everything up off the coast of Frances. That’s been happening for a decade. And so we did a film on the Sea Shepherds campaign and we documented some of the crazy things the campaign did that were so effective. They brought dead dolphins to the front of the Eiffel Tower, to the front of the National Assembly, and really showed the French people what was happening so that they could have fish on their plates. So with our film, we did a little premiere in Paris and in Toronto, and together with the Sea Shepherd campaign we got the French courts to force the French government to change the law within months. So even an unsophisticated video can drive a lot of change.
The other technology that I find really promising is satellite data. We’re working with a group called Stand.earth. In British Columbia, it is giving us satellite imagery for old growth forests to protect the last remaining forests. So any time a road gets built or there’s a change in the nonseasonal vegetation, alerts go off. Indigenous groups and local community groups can get those alerts and then report them, and that helps the indigenous groups who have sovereignty over those forests protect them. Once you bring visibility to something like the ocean, which can be out of sight, out of mind, or forests and remote areas, then things can change for the benefit of biodiversity.
Bebbington: Another technology that can make a difference is AI. The European Union is a huge innovator in terms of corporate responsibility and they have signed into law the Due Diligence and Supply Chain Act, which seeks to force companies to do their due diligence around forced labor, for example, but also their environmental due diligence. And this has prompted corporations like seafood companies to start tracing what they are catching, and also, what they are really buying off other people who are catching fish. They’re starting to ask, “Where was this caught? And under what conditions?”
For example, the biggest seafood company in the world, Maruha, spent two years tracing every piece of fish protein that they had either brought from a supplier, bought from a market, or fished themselves so they knew exactly what they had and where it came from. Then they went to the Ocean Disclosure Project, which acts like an informational intermediary. So they can say, for example, if you have fished a cod, and it came from this part of the sea, then here are the ecological conditions that it came from. And AI can help push that kind of traceability further. The technology means we should be able to know where everything—and particularly, any product we buy—has come from and under what conditions.
Tell your good news, and tell your not-so-good news, be open and transparent about it. And then learn together.
Do individuals have a role to play in this?
Dasilva: I think it’s really important for individuals to feel like they can make a difference. But I also think businesses and governments have to really step up. I think you need startup DNA and business DNA in conservation, and I think conservation needs that business energy to get to where we need to get.
Freudiger: I think even more than businesses, we need to go from businesses that have a linear business model to more circular models. That’s why we are collaborating with a lot of startups worldwide, because they think differently. For example, we use the world’s first packaging made out of seaweed fibers. Just 100 percent seaweed fibers, no binders, no anything. And you can dissolve it into water in hours and use it to fertilize your plants at home. So we brand owners are saying, we will never deliver you packaging that you end up cluttering your home. As humans, we are good at accumulating stuff, but we are asking, “how can you stay lean?” At ID Gèneve, we like to talk about credible alternatives and we try to create these alternatives through collaboration. So this seaweed packaging is made with Notpla, which is based in the United Kingdom. They’re harnessing the power of seaweed to replace single-use plastics. Together with them we are tackling a problem in the luxury industry.
What are your hopes and aspirations for the future and biodiversity restoration? And what are other ways you think business can help advance this cause?
Freudiger: Metal travels twice around the planet before being remelted. And so at ID Gèneve we were thinking about how we can create a credible alternative to how the luxury industry operates by making shorter routes, for example. And I would like to see more tangible actions for corporations and more startups creating these kinds of alternatives. We need solutions, but we also need to inspire. We live in Switzerland, for example, and Switzerland is very good at recycling. But recently, we voted against a law that would create a carbon tax. And that makes me ask: “How can we make this an aspiration? How can we make ecology more desirable?” We need to collaborate with each other to get a real solution to climate change.
Bebbington: Once you’ve done your design and your implementation of your restoration projects as a business, then my hope is that you get the monitoring and reporting framework sorted out early. Tell your good news, and tell your not-so-good news, be open and transparent about it. And then learn together. So there might be corporations that are operating restoration projects in the same space, and if they know about each other then they can work together and the consequences of that will add up to much more than what a single corporation could do alone. I admire modesty, but modesty has costs in these contexts. Corporations also have to learn from others that are similar to themselves to really hone and perfect what they are doing in the restoration space.
Dasilva: I think this has to be the decade of action. Business has such a key part to play in making environmental change. On-the-ground projects are the kind of investments we need to make in order to see the real impact. It’s great that there are organizations like Re:wild where a business can trust the project they are working with that they will make a real impact. I’d love this decade to be the one where we really turn the corner and we can tell our kids that we really changed the narrative on biodiversity. If we do the right things in conservation, that’s the frontline fight against climate change. They are nature-based solutions. And finally, when the government sees private citizens and companies acting, they will care more because they will see that it’s a priority for the people. That’s the last piece of the puzzle: for the government to have this as a high enough priority that they make the right regulations and large scale changes. 
Lead image: VectorMine / Shutterstock
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