The corporate ecosystem services review: guidelines for identifying business risks & opportunities arising from ecosystem change

This paper points out that ecosystems provide businesses with numerous benefits or “ecosystem services.” Companies not only impact ecosystems and the services they provide but also depend on them. Therefore ecosystem degradation not only jeopardises future economic well-being, creating new winners and losers within the business community but also poses risks to corporate performance as well as creates new business opportunities. Through a Corporate Ecosystem Services Review (ESR) framework this paper presents guidelines for identifying business risks and opportunities arising from ecosystem change.

The paper provides an analytical framework for each step of the ESR process. It offers a methodology consisting of five stages for an Ecosystem Services Review:

• select the scope- Choose boundary within which to conduct the ESR (a specific business unit, product, market, land holdings, major customer, supplier, etc.)
• identify priority ecosystem services- Systematically evaluate degree of company’s dependence and impact on more than 20 ecosystem services. Determine highest “priority” ecosystem services—those most relevant to business performance
• analyse trends in priority services- Research and evaluate conditions and trends in the priority ecosystem services, as well as the drivers of these trends
• identify business risks and opportunities- Identify and evaluate business risks and opportunities that might arise due to the trends in priority ecosystem services
• develop strategies- Outline and prioritise strategies for managing the risks and opportunities