Standards Development

Scope

This standard defines requirements and guidelines to help organisations understanding and mainstreaming biodiversity’s protection, conservation, the sustainable use of its components and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources, within their activities.

This standard is suitable for all kind of organisations (e.g. economic operators, national or local governments, inter-governmental organizations, public or private organizations, financial institutions, development organizations, civil society organizations and specialists) and can be used at different scales if needed (e.g. local scales such as a production site or municipalities, as well as a larger scales such as a corporate / entire group level or by a regional public organisations). This standard is applicable to all activities of any organisations (including projects and operations), from site direct operations (including land-holding) to entire value chains or their sphere of influence (including relationship inside or outside the value chain, e.g: formal or information associations in which the organisation is involved, peer organisations, competitors …).

While this standard is aligned with current regulations and standards, it can be used as a standalone by organisations and without prior knowledge, actions or strategies of biodiversity.

This standard ensures robustness of organisations’ strategic approaches to biodiversity in terms of the method used to define it, its content, and its implementation. It is built on latest available data and knowledge and sets best practices for organisations.

This standard provides guidance on identifying organisation-specific dependencies and impacts on biodiversity, prioritizing them, setting ambitions and goals, and defining coherent actions to mitigate impacts on biodiversity. It also sets requirements regarding governance of the strategic approach for biodiversity, engagement of stakeholders, and communication.

Purpose

According to the Convention on Biological Diversity, article 2, biodiversity is the “variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species, and of ecosystems.” 

The last evaluation (2019) from the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services (IPBES) shows that biodiversity is declining at an alarming rate and that this loss is mainly due to human activities through the following drivers:

- Change in land and sea use

- Direct exploitation

- Climate change

- Pollution

- Invasive alien species

In order to reduce these drivers and protect biodiversity, mobilization is growing among all kinds of stakeholders (governments, companies, society, associations, investors…). 

Thus, a lot of organisations, including companies, are getting engaged on this topic. However, organization lack guidance to reduce their impacts and there is a real need for standardized and cocreated tools and methods helping them to:

- Continuously integrating biodiversity stakes in their activities

- Reduce their impacts on biodiversity and their footprint on nature

- Getting their activities back in ecosytems dynamics

- Guarantee quality, implementation and follow-up of commitments taken on biodiversity protection

This standard aims at filling this gap currently left by standards at ISO that don’t provide these kinds of precise method. 

Biodiversity is an issue in its own right and this standard promote a better integration of biodiversity issues in organisation’s activities

There are no specific ISO or IEC standards dedicated to biodiversity, ISO 14001 or ISO 26000 provide broader, environmental, or more global, social responsibility approach that do not allow to treat biodiversity at the height of its stake.

It is proposed that this standard be a global standard dedicated to better integration of biodiversity issues into the activities of the organization. Additional documents could be developed to go into more detail on specific approaches, objectives (such as biodiversity net gain), methods or tools (such as biodiversity footprint calculation). 

Outside ISO systems, there are plenty of existing principles, concepts, definitions related to biodiversity but they do not provide a practical way to address biodiversity issues in organisations.

ISO standards are widely recognised documents. They can help to act by clarify terms, elaborate a common understanding, a common language, recognised frameworks, methods and tools to implement robust biodiversity approaches