MANILA, Philippines - Big Filipino companies are being urged to invest more in sustaining biodiversity as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) program and for small and medium business enterprises to try to minimize their negative impact on biodiversity.
At the Business Opportunities in Biodiversity Conference sponsored by the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) yesterday at the Bayview Park Hotel in Manila, it was noted that only a handful of Filipino firm engage in biodiversity programs.
These include the SM Group, cement firms Cemex and Holcim, and the Tagaytay Highlands. Some large corporations, while having strong CSR programs, do not have long-term sustainable biodiversity-focused CSR projects, according to Reynaldo F. Molina, resource mobilization specialist of the ACB.
Molina noted that the CSR programs of most large Filipino corporations involve tree planting. He said a committed biodiversity program should involve “tree growing” rather than just “tree planting.”
According to Molina, a tree growing program, would require not merely planting the trees but nurturing them and their surroundings.
Dr. Filiberto A. Pollisco Jr., program development specialist of the ACB, said businesses have a direct and indirect impact on diversity. He pointed out that businesses, rely on plants, animals and ecosystem services for food, water, paper, fiber, medicine, building materials, fuel, minerals and a host of other things.
Dr. Naoki Adachi, executive director of the Japan Business Initiative for Conservation and Sustainable use of Biodiversity (JBIB), a resource speaker at the conference, reported that as of 2007, world production of paper amounted to 394 million tons which is equivalent to about 38 million hectares of forest or as large as Japan.
Dr. Pollisco warned that biodiversity loss, could result in business losses and economic downturn.
Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Ramon Paje, in a speech read for him by DENR director Marcial Amaro, acknowledged that in the Philippines, numerous small and medium enterprises have a greater negative impact on diversity than big corporations.
Their negative activities include illegal trading in endangered species which involve poachers, transporters and middlemen, to restaurants, makers of traditional medicines, pet shops.
In 2008, Paje said the Philippines was identified as the source of 80 percent of the world’s ornamental fish with the trade valued at $10 million annually. Many of these were caught using cyanide, resulting in destruction of coral reefs and even resulting in tremendous wastage of the fish.
Paje observed that there is a need to, enlist and inform small and medium businesses about biodiversity to allow them to engage in biodiversity-based business legally and sustainably.
An example of a non-extractive biodiversity-based business in eco-tourism is the butanding or whale shark-watching in Donsol, Sorsogon and tarsiers in Bohol, Paje said.