Multinational corporations play a prominent role in shaping the environmental trajectory of the planet. The integration of environmental costs and benefits into corporate decision-making has enormous, but as yet unfulfilled, potential to promote sustainable development. To help steer business decisions toward better environmental outcomes, corporate reporting frameworks need to develop scientifically informed standards that consistently consider land use and land conversion, clean air (including greenhouse gas emissions), availability and quality of freshwater, degradation of coastal and marine habitats, and sustainable use of renewable resources such as soil, timber, and fisheries. Standardization by itself will not be enough-also required are advances in ecosystem modeling and in our understanding of critical ecological thresholds. With improving ecosystem science, the opportunity for realizing a major breakthrough in reporting corporate environmental impacts and dependencies has never been greater. Now is the time for ecologists to take advantage of an explosion of sustainability commitments from business leaders and expanding pressure for sustainable practices from shareholders, financial institutions, and consumers.corporate sustainability | ESG reporting | natural capital | ecosystem services | multinational corporations
Public agencies worldwide are increasingly adopting an ecosystem service framework to manage lands serving multiple uses. Yet, reliable, practical, and well-tailored methods remain a major limitation in moving from conceptual to actionable approaches. Together with one of the largest federal land managing agencies, we co-develop and co-demonstrate an ecosystem services approach tailored to specific decisions, through a process with potentially widespread relevance. With the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), we focus on balancing military training with biodiversity and resource conservation under both budgetary and land-use pressures at a representative installation. In an iterative process of co-design and application, we define, map, and quantify multiple ecosystem services under realistic management options. Resource management budget emerges as a major determinant of the degree to which managers can sustain both necessary training environments -a DoD-specific ecosystem service -and a prairie ecosystem with species of conservation concern. We also found clear tradeoffs between training intensity and forest-related services. Our co-developed approach brings otherwise hidden values and tradeoffs to the fore in a balanced way that can help public agencies safeguard priority services under potentially conflicting uses and budget limitations.
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