Reflections on the Conference for Nature (2): Guest blog from Andy Spencer, CEMEX UK

Here is the second guest blog reflecting on last week's conference.  This one is from Andy Spencer, Sustainability Director from CEMEX UK.

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I was delighted to have the opportunity to address the recent ‘State of Nature’ conference.

Besides the obvious privilege of sharing the stage with esteemed speakers such as Sir David Attenborough, the inclusion of business in the proceedings gave me a welcome opportunity to deliver a strong (and surprising for some!) message: Working together for Nature makes business sense.

This message was replicated with other business speakers and could not have been clearer. We depend on nature for our food, our natural resources, our well being and the vast array of products and services needed by society. The operational and social licence to operate for business depends on a responsible approach. If we allow the decline to continue, both business and society will suffer, and ultimately pay a heavy price.

The words ‘synergy’ and ‘win-win’ were often used on the day in the context of the business and NGO sector working together. I sensed some initial audience scepticism around this concept, but welcomed the apparent softening of it as the realisation hit that we can make a real difference by working together. It’s not a perfect world, but there are gains to be made.

In CEMEX we’ve worked in partnerships for nature with the NGO sector for decades, but in recent years the work has become more structured and has a broader scope. Good partnership creates trust, commitment, and consequent action, delivering value both for nature and for the business.

I’m often asked about this value, and it covers a broad range of areas such as improved employee engagement, cost reduction, enhanced licence to operate and increased trust in our brand. This sits alongside our support for well executed, consistently applied policy and regulations such as the EU Bird and Habitat Directives. These create a level playing field, and give our stakeholders confidence that we are operating to high standards.

Our strategy, however, is to work beyond regulatory requirements to deliver better value for both shareholders and stakeholders.

I hope that many were energised by our partnership case studies presented on the day. Whether we are creating landscape scale priority habitat restoration, or targeting particular local opportunities such as conservation for turtle doves, house sparrows and rare butterflies like the small blue, working together delivers far more than we are able to do alone. Sound business and sound nature conservation can go hand in hand.

So to conclude, we should grasp those synergies that exist, while understanding that we won’t always be 100% aligned in our views.

The scale of opportunity from the combination of business and the NGO sectors working together is vast. The hugely diverse audience in the room on the day all had one common belief – we badly need to turn around our biodiversity fortunes. Let’s press on with this vital journey together – and soon.

Do you agree with Andy?

it would be great to here your views.  And if you want to see how Andy performed on the day, just click on the video below...

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