Source: WBCSD

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI) says that a favorable public policy environment will encourage the adoption of good practices by business at the CoP11 to CBD.

Taking the opportunity of the CSI’s side event at the 11th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (CoP11) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) today, Philippe Fonta, WBCSD Managing Director said: “Business today understands and acknowledges the need to contribute by helping society to manage beyond its traditional boundaries. Companies must manage natural and social capital via their operations, supply chains and investments. In parallel, governments should provide the policies and frameworks which make this possible, practical and scalable.”

Recognizing their responsibility for effective management of the environmental impacts of their quarry operations, including rehabilitation, CSI members produced the Guidelines on Quarry Rehabilitation in 2011 to share their success stories on restoring or even creating value in worked-out quarries through effective biodiversity management and well-planned rehabilitation strategies. The document sets out a clear set of recommendations on how to develop, implement, manage and measure effective quarry rehabilitation. Featuring 30 operational case studies on restoring or even creating value in worked-out quarries, covering a wide range of quarry types and local habitats around the world, it is an important reference document for policy makers to better understand how effective biodiversity management and well-planned rehabilitation strategies can deliver significant environmental and social benefits.

When developing these guideline documents and tools in different work areas, the CSI also worked closely with its partners and engaged in extensive discussion with external stakeholders to test the validity and applicability of these resources from a variety of perspectives. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), one of WBCSD’s long term partners, joined as co-host at the side event in Hyderabad.

“ÌUCN is proud to be one of the key external stakeholders of the CSI. The CSI, over the past ten years, reached out to the conservation community, development agencies and investors when they reviewed their guidelines. However without the creation of an enabling policy framework it will remain difficult to implement all these sustainably initiatives due to the lack of clear policy signals allowing these voluntary initiatives to be rewarded.” said Gérard Bos, Head – Global Business & Biodiversity Programme, IUCN.

This side-event is an important milestone in a collaborative effort, for the dissemination of the CSI guidelines for quarry rehabilitation and other initiatives to better manage the services that ecosystems can bring to society. Gathering business, governments, NGOs, communities and other stakeholders, this cross sectoral collaboration should provide an ideal opportunity for promoting the adoption of these guidelines on a larger scale, within the cement sector and beyond.

On that basis, the CSI strongly expects that governments recommend the adoption of these guidelines and good practices within the cement sector and beyond,while providing the necessary policy frameworks favoring this process for scaling-up business and public policy solutions.