How biodiversity loss could disrupt businesses in the next 10 years

The Law Society UK’s new report explores legal action - including liability litigation - to hold corporates accountable for biodiversity loss.

In the next 30 years, one of the most challenging legal questions for the profession will be how to hold corporate actors accountable for biodiversity loss they have contributed to. We will see ever novel legal approaches to proving causation and seeking redress for biodiversity harms.

Their report, Addressing biodiversity loss – evolution or revolution of English law?, cites Conservation Litigation in observing that

Harm to biodiversity often involves a multiplicity of impacts – on the individual members of the species whose numbers are reduced, functioning of the ecosystem that the species inhabits, human wellbeing of people living in the vicinity of the site and other values assigned to nature by Indigenous and traditional communities, which are often impossible to express in monetary terms.41 It is important to acknowledge that no monetary compensation can remedy the spiritual and cultural value of nature. At the same time, physical damage to biodiversity and the wider ecosystem can be halted or even reversed if appropriate compensation to that end is awarded by courts