Every day, decisions are made worldwide that generate substantial profits but cause severe environmental harm. This degradation affects everyone, including the decision-makers themselves. Business is not immune to externalities: climate change and ecosystem collapse are disrupting operations and driving up costs, pushing economies to the brink. It is a conundrum: whilst the majority of people and organizations do not set out to destroy nature, existing regulatory frameworks provide few mechanisms for meaningful protection. Indeed, our market-based economies evolved under the assumption that natural resources were infinite. The exploitation of the natural world continues because we lack both the means and the incentive to stop it. Consider a paper company aiming to reduce costs by sourcing wood from untouched tropical forest in Indonesia. Despite the Environmental, Social, and Governance Department’s objections on grounds including potential social and environmental impacts of habitat loss, depletion of local food sources and air pollution from machinery and vehicle dust, the project goes ahead. Mangrove forests and other nearshore ecosystems like seagrass meadows and coral reefs support myriad species and human communities, but often become degraded by activities like aquaculture and mining. Image by Rhett A. Butler / Mongabay. Similarly, picture a company supplying cobalt and lithium for electric vehicle batteries. To bolster supplies amid limited global stocks of these minerals, the firm seeks licenses for deep sea exploration in the western Pacific, disregarding potentially irreversible and widespread damage to the marine environment. In each case the balance sheet took precedence. So how can we engineer…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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