Japan: Three quarters of companies ignore biodiversity

Date: 19 Jan 2011

According to an Environment Ministry survey, the majority of Japanese firms ignore the impact that their operations may have on biodiversity.

The survey was carried out on companies listed on the Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka stock exchanges and received over 3,000 responses. The majority of those that said they did not actively manage their impact argued that, whilst they agreed that biodiversity is important, they did not believe that their activities unduly made an impact in this area.

Some Japanese firms have shown leadership in the area, however. For example, Sumito Corp is part of a four party project that has seen extra resource put into a nickel mine in Madagascar which established a wide zone around the project as a protection zone for flora and fauna, with the aim of restoring and protecting more than the area actually affected by the mine operations.

The recent survey shows that such programmes remain in the minority, however.

In contrast, 9 out of 10 firms said they were actively addressing climate change emissions.

Bookmark with:

 Del.icio.us |  Digg |  reddit |  Facebook |  StumbleUpon

Comments

You must be logged in to add comments