THE MANAGEMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS OR LEARNING HOW TO CONSERVE THE NATURAL CAPITAL
THE MANAGEMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS OR LEARNING HOW TO CONSERVE THE NATURAL CAPITAL

Summary/Abstract: Nowadays, there is a growing consensus across all the international business communities of the need to better understand and integrate the management of environmental risks and opportunities into all aspects of business operations. It can be easily remarked that from insurers to banks, the financial industry is becoming increasingly conscious of the risks and opportunities related to biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES) and due to all these facts, the new challenges affect the business prospects of bank clients both directly and indirectly, especially where clients are involved in agriculture, resource – intensive sectors, natural resource – dependent industries, or ecologically valuable and sensitive areas. The present paper “The Management of Environmental Risks or Learning How to Conserve Our Natural Capital” starts by presenting the risks and opportunities that our world in continuous motion confronts itself with. The research starts with the new recommendations that have been elaborated in the Briefing called „Demystifying Materiality: Hardwiring Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services into Finance” launched by the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), which was launched at the tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP 10) in Nagoya, Japan, in October 2010. Our study also concentrates upon the forms of emerging concerns and rising perception of risks that include the changes in the way some financial institutions – alongside natural resource dependent companies – are now starting to understand and to preserve the economic importance of biodiversity and ecosystems. Taking into account that, in essence, biodiversity and ecosystem services jointly underpin all life on Earth, our research comes to give a new perspective upon the strong connection that has always existed and that will always exist between human development by the aid of economic growth and prosperity and nature.

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