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A company can do more than simply comply with legislation and identify the environmental impacts resulting from its production processes. It can demonstrate a long-term vision with a commitment to the health of the Planet and its own survival as a business.

By helping to effectively conserve biodiversity, the company will be contributing to the quality and quantity of every resource available in nature to its own business, its supply chain and the population in general, thus gaining in corporate responsibility, competitive advantage and enhancing its public image. At the same time, the company will be preventing regulatory risks (federal legislation barriers and non-customs barriers) or capital risks (financial community’s stricter criteria to grant credit).

By becoming aware of the many benefits provided by ecosystem services, companies will gain an understanding of the extent to which the survival of their businesses depends on ecological processes, i.e., the way nature works and the relationships between and within ecosystems.

Even if there is no direct effect on a company’s facilities, the loss of biodiversity resulting from the disappearance of natural areas brings a whole series of negative impacts both socially and economically that will interfere with a company’s business-as-usual approach. Here are just a few examples of the ecosystem services provided by natural areas benefiting your business:

	Natural areas play a fundamental role in the water cycle. They are responsible for collecting rain water, storing it and later releasing it into rivers. These can form dams that will feed water treatment stations or hydroelectric plants, for example. Natural areas can also filter waste from agriculture and livestock breeding, helping to preserve the quality of the water in rivers and lakes.
	Thanks to the ecological role of insects, their presence in natural areas near plantations allows for pollination, ensuring harvesting.
	Nature can inspire the development of new technologies. Insect and bird wings, for example, helped to inspire the aerodynamic design of aircrafts.
	Supplying our need for food and fighting hunger are two major objectives of mankind as a whole. Nature provides resources and possibilities for new discoveries. The destruction of natural areas ─resulting in the loss of biodiversity─ seriously reduces these possibilities. Examples are our fish stocks, which, due to overfishing, are being condemned to extinction.
	Without biodiversity, the chances of new scientific discoveries are greatly reduced. Scientific research can find in nature new medicines to fight diseases.
	Natural landscapes, the result of complex and intense phenomena and ecological and cultural processes, promote quality of life and leisure. Their existence and survival are fundamental to the tourism industry, one of the most important industries in the world today.
	Natural areas also work as natural barriers to natural phenomena like storms. By serving as a barrier to strong wind and rain, natural areas help to reduce the negative impact on populations and businesses.