Dear John,
Biodiversity is essential to all life on Earth, including humans. Without a wide range of animals, plants, fungi, and microorganisms, ecosystems can’t provide the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. Corporations are driving the global biodiversity crisis through habitat destruction, pollution, and unsustainable extraction practices, compromising the future of humanity, the planet, and themselves.
More than 50% of the global gross domestic product depends on nature. This dependence means ecosystem health is a material risk to corporations, which opens the door for shareholder action. Shareholders are paying attention.
| | | NEW: Biodiversity Program
Business activities that negatively impact nature, directly or indirectly, pose reputational, legal, and financial risks to companies. In focusing shareholder power on these risks, As You Sow helps companies stop contributing to ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss and instead take action that protects both. | | | | | |
| The deep sea, one of the last remaining undisturbed ecosystems on the planet, is existentially threatened by deep sea mining. Beginning with Tesla and General Motors, we are seeking public commitments from corporate
leaders to not allow any material obtained from deep sea mining in their supply chains. | | | International Paper is a leading producer of packaging and pulp products. In response to our shareholder resolution, the company has now agreed to disclose sourcing areas and species information for its entire wood fiber supply chain, and to conduct a science-based, geography-specific impact and dependency assessment.
In one of the first biodiversity shareholder
resolutions ever filed, we are asking Granite Construction shareholders to weigh in on its destructive quarry project in Utah, planned for a protected recreational and watershed area. | | |
Biodiversity loss is inextricably woven into every issue we face, including – especially! – climate change.
Climate change is compromising ecosystems around the world, causing local species loss, increased disease, and mass mortality events, including the first climate-driven extinctions. As biodiversity loss diminishes ecosystem health, ecosystems in turn are less able to store carbon or reduce the impacts of flood and drought. |
| | | | | | No time to lose
The Planetary Boundaries framework identifies a set of 9 global thresholds we cannot cross if we want to maintain a habitable Earth where humanity can thrive. We have broken through 6 of those 9 boundaries, including biodiversity loss. The risk is extreme and there is no time to lose – we must act, now. |
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| Give online today: asyousow.org/donate | | | As You Sow is the nation’s leading shareholder representative, with a 30+ year track record promoting environmental and social corporate responsibility and advancing values-aligned investing. Its issue areas include climate change, ocean plastics,
toxins in the food system, biodiversity loss, racial injustice, lack of workplace diversity, and excessive executive compensation. See As You Sow’s shareholder resolution tracker. | | | As You Sow
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