6. Engagement of Industry in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework

 Room 301, Vancouver Convention Center

Unsustainable consumption and production practices are increasingly causing a loss of biodiversity in ecosystems around the world. Indeed, the root cause of the biodiversity crisis lies in an economic model that heavily relies on resource extraction, wasteful practices, and pollution.
While productive activities are ultimately responsible for the direct drivers of this loss, they must play a prominent role in reducing it. New production and consumption patterns must be promoted at the global level and additional attention should be given worldwide to meet the SDGs and ensure a just development.
Along this line, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) calls for industries and productive activities worldwide to mainstream biodiversity and adopt sustainable production and supply chains with additional efforts. 
Sustainable bioeconomy as well as circular economy principles and practices represent concrete approaches to mitigate the triple planetary crisis while ensuring economic and social development. However, barriers and bottlenecks limiting the mainstreaming of biodiversity considerations in business practices still exist.
Among others, industries and productive activities face:

• lack of norms and legislative frameworks in support of biodiversity conservation;
• uncertainties on methodologies for measuring and reporting on impacts;
• limited knowledge on nature-based solutions and on new business opportunities; 
• lack of financial support to convert to green business models.

Objective
The objective of the side event is to provide the international community with inputs on the biodiversity-industry nexus and on how to mainstream biodiversity considerations in industry and productive activities. Furthermore, the event will seek to identify the innovative actions needed to ensure a transformative and sustainable progress in the field of biodiversity conservation and industrial development, as stressed by Target 14, 15 and 16 of the GBF.
In particular, the side event will deepen three key aspects:

• Relevance of policies and norms to guide business decisions;
• Need to harmonize methodologies for monitoring and assessing impact on biodiversity from business practices;
• Access to knowledge and examples that could inspire new business models.

Structure Of The Side Event
The event will present concrete examples of policies, business models, technology innovation, initiatives and approaches that promote mainstreaming of biodiversity conservation within productive activities.
Furthermore, the event will also deepen the key role of local communities, in particular indigenous groups, in the definition of strategies for development of productive landscapes and the related conservation of ecosystems.
The side event will be opened by an inspirational keynote speech, focusing on the biodiversity-industry nexus. The keynote speech will focus on the impact of industry and productive activities on biodiversity and, vice versa, the relevance of biodiversity for industrial development. The talk will be followed by a panel discussion, presenting the viewpoint of different stakeholders and active players in the field. The panel discussion will be followed by an interactive Q&A session.