The ‘pioneer in 5’ with ben tolhurst

Ben Tolhurst, Director at Business Declares and signatory to the open letter from Leaders for Global Assemblies, shares his ‘Pioneer in 5’ with us below. We’re proud to having joined Business Declares this week, and to be working with Directors Ben, Fiona Ellis and Samantha Cooper, and the rest of the network to pursue collaborative action for people, nature and climate!

1. What is Business Declares mission?

Business Declares believes that business can be a major force for good for tackling the climate, ecological and social breakdown. Our mission to is raise awareness of this crisis amongst businesses and most importantly help accelerate their plans to tackle this crisis.

2. How do you engage businesses and what impact are you seeing through your work?

We engage businesses through a range of approaches;

1) Convening thought provoking webinars tackling difficult and/or emerging topics to enable businesses to hear from and question experts, improve their understanding and help drive their plans and actions to address these topics.

2) Sharing good practice, tools, methodologies across our member network to help educate and accelerate pragmatic actions to address the climate crisis.

3) Acting as a critical business friend, providing facilitated workshops and presentation material to unpack challenges facing specific businesses.

In terms of the impact we are seeing, it’s members networking with other members and sharing common challenges and solutions, and members actively addressing challenging areas such as scope 3 or nature based solutions and building these into their plans.

3. What is an opportunity you think business is missing right now to add value on nature and biodiversity and drive business value?

There is a risk that “value on nature and biodiversity” is seen simply as “doing some offsetting” and offsetting in the context “atonement” for carbon which can’t be or isn’t taken out of the value chain. The missed opportunity is that businesses could look at nature and biodiversity as a good thing to do in itself ie engage in nature based solutions not because you want to get something back (ie being able to claim net zero) but because it is a morally right thing to do. Taking this moral approach will have an indirect benefit in attracting talent, individuals who want to work in a purposed primacy culture rather than profit primacy.

4. What are the top 3 areas in which you are hoping to see greater action by business to address the climate and ecological crises?

1) Addressing their carbon reduction pathways alongside biodiversity and social impact. We believe all three must be combined and be in scope for sustainability related plans.

2) Addressing the complexities and challenges of scope 3, to truly get clarity on their value and supply chains from a carbon, biodiversity and social perspective.

3) Educating staff and driving culture change across the businesses, changing business models to ensure that the climate, ecological and social breakdown is the lens through which ALL business decisions are made.

5. What in nature personally inspires you?

The incredible interdependency and collaboration of nature’s ecosystem where different elements interact with each other to support, feed and protect each other to create amazing environments.

For more on Business Declares and Leaders for Global Assemblies

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