The ‘Biodiversity in Good Company’ Initiative and India Business & Biodiversity Initiative (IBBI) organised a joint session at CBD COP 13, Mexico to share the experience on biodiversity mainstreaming practices by the German and Indian Businesses.

The session was chaired by Dr. Elsa Nickel, Director-General Nature Conservation and Sustainable Use of Natural Resources, Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety and Dr. Amita Prasad, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India. Both offices appreciated work done by the businesses and also suggested more ways to make biodiversity topic more prominent.

The India Business & Biodiversity Initiative (IBBI) released a publication “Reimagining Business for Biodiversity Enhancement: Case Studies from Indian Industry” which is a collection of case studies from 9 different Indian companies. The publication highlights work of 9 IBBI member companies in the field of Agriculture, Forestry, Mine, Medicine, Automobile and Infrastructure and how mainstreaming biodiversity benefitted the overall sustainability of their products. These publication also presents analysis of the business cases of the companies work and linked their activities with India’s 12 National Biodiversity Targets (NBT’s).On the occasion IBBI released a short film on the work of mainstreaming by three IBBI member companies in the field of Agriculture & Furniture sector. The film “Learning from nature” presents first-hand site findings and observations of local stakeholders upon companies work for sustainable management of agriculture and judicious use of forest resources to minimise impacts and dependences on biodiversity.