Standards, including those in certification schemes, are widely used to influence environmental performance. Amongst other things, they create performance requirements related to the access to finance, internal business processes, membership of trade bodies, certification of products and services, and access to markets.

 

We reviewed the biodiversity requirements of 36 environmental standards sampled from eight business sectors with the aims of gaining an understanding of the treatment of biodiversity across sectors, to highlight commonalities and differences, and to help businesses and funding agencies to improve their internal processes. It is also hoped that this review will stimulate the development of best practice guidelines and ultimately result in more effective and harmonised standards.

 

This study looked at the way standards treat; the components of biodiversity; threats to biodiversity (including appropriate responses); and references to multilateral environmental agreements. This study looked at which of these three elements were included in each standard, how they were defined, and what requirements were stipulated for their management. It was beyond the scope of this study to consider the degree to which individual standards actually influence biodiversity conservation, but this is prime territory for future work.