"We need governments around the world to transform the rules of the economic game and demand that businesses act now," says the statement released by the Business for Nature coalition.

It has been signed by 330 companies, representing a cumulative turnover of more than 1,500 billion dollars, including Unilever, Ikea, Danone, BNP Paribas and the Indian steel giant Tata Steel.

International negotiations on the protection of ecosystems are due to conclude in December in Canada, during COP15 Biodiversity.

The international community must reach an agreement establishing a global framework by 2050, with a milestone in 2030. Almost none of the objectives set for 2020 have been achieved.

If the economic world is beginning to publish its carbon footprint and its impact on the climate, in a more or less satisfactory way and sometimes qualified as "greenwashing", still few companies detail the consequences of their activities on biodiversity.

"This statement shows the overwhelming support of big business for an ambitious global deal for nature, with clear targets to drive collective action from business and finance," said André Hoffmann, vice president of Roche. Holdings.

In March, a report from central banks found that financial institutions and corporations were underestimating the risks of biodiversity loss and destroying the "natural assets" on which they depended.

The new declaration asks heads of state to impose on large companies the obligation to assess their impact on biodiversity and their dependence on it by the end of the decade.

The decline of global biodiversity Julia Han JANICKI AFP

"The current pace of global activity is more than the planet can handle," said Steve Waygood, an Aviva Investors executive who signed the statement.

"If nature were a current account, we would be largely overdrawn."

Many hope that COP15 will result in an agreement on nature protection as ambitious as the Paris agreement in 2015 to combat climate change.

But fears are strong that the negotiation will end in a failure similar to the climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009.

© 2022 AFP