While many corporations tout their activities in support of the environment, a new study shows their efforts are likely going nowhere.
Undertaken and published by a team at Lancaster University in the UK, the study analyzed the sustainability reports of 100 of the world’s largest companies. The results were published in the prestigious journal Science.
The researchers discovered an “almost total” lack of transparency on the part of these companies, making it nearly impossible to evaluate “the quality of ecosystem restoration projects led by companies” and indicating that “some corporations exaggerate their efforts.”
More than 90% of the reports analyzed failed to explain a single, concrete, positive ecological result, according to the researchers. The main problem was that the corporations’ projects lacked scientific rigor in defining environmental restoration, outlining methods, and quantifying the results. A third of the projects do not even indicate the area of habitat they intend to restore, and none of them quantified the social or economic impacts on stakeholders and local communities.
Additionally, for 80% of the projects, the companies did not disclose how much money they invested in restoration.
Dr. Tim Lamont of Lancaster University, lead author of the study, said,
Restoring degraded ecosystems is an urgent challenge, and large companies have the potential to play a vital role. With their size, resources and logistics expertise, they could help achieve the large-scale restoration we need in many places.
“When a company says it has planted thousands of trees to restore habitat and absorb carbon, how do we know if this has been accomplished, if the trees will survive, and if it has resulted in a functioning ecosystem that benefits biodiversity and people? In many cases, we have discovered that the evidence provided by large corporations to support their claims is insufficient,” said the authors, who demand from the companies “greater rigor, coherence, transparency and accountability.”
The findings coincide with the experience of stakeholders. In Spain, according to forestry expert Francisco Castañares, tree planting efforts as carbon emissions offsets by large corporations have resulted in unkept forests that contribute to increasingly common out-of-control wildfires.
“Corporate involvement will certainly transform the future of ecosystem restoration. But policy interventions must determine whether that change is for better or worse,” the study concludes.
