"Biodiversity for Sustainable Development" is the motto of the 12th Conference of the Parties (CoP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), taking place on 6-17 October in Pyeongchang, Republic of Korea. We will be there. Our member companies Aleph, Beraca, Fujitsu, GIZ, Mars, Saraya und Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank will participate in the side events programme and use the opportunity to address challenges and solutions from a business perspective.  

• The "Business and Biodiversity Forum", organised by the CBD Secretariat, will take place from 12th to 14th of October. The 3-day series of events comprises an extensive number of workshops and panel discussions, covering various business-related topics.  A programme overview as well as the detailied programme can be found at <link http: www.cbd.int business bc cop12.shtml>"Business and Biodiversity Forum". Integrated into the forum will be the 4th Meeting of the Global Partnership on Business and Biodiversity that we will participate in as one of the partners.
• Side Event: As in previous years, the two weeks of COP negotiations will be accompanied by an extensive side events programme. 'Biodiversity in Good Company' will be holding its own event on 15 October, 18:15 - 19:45 h: "Taking business efforts to protect biodiversity and natural capital - tangible examples for business action". Further information under ID 3120 in the <link http: www.cbd.int register side-events _blank>calendar of side events. Our member company Saraya is offering an event on 13 October, same time in the early evening (ID 3214). They will show how they realized an elephant sanctuary in Borneo in a collaboration with partners. 
• Business and Biodiversity in Germany: In 2013, Germany's Federal Environment Ministry initiated the Platform <link http: www.biologischevielfalt.de fileadmin nbs documents ubi ubi_2020_english_july_2014.pdf _blank>“Unternehmen Biologische Vielfalt 2020” (“Enterprise Biological Diversity 2020”), a forum for business federations, nature conservation organisations and government to foster dialogue and action in favour of the CBD and the German national biodiversity strategy. The approach has proven to be very successful. 'Biodiversity in Good Company' as both one of the partners and the coordination office of the plaform will inform the international audience in Korea about latest developments.

What will be in the centre of negotiations at COP 12? The CBD published the draft decisions for the conference <link http: www.cbd.int doc meetings cop cop-12 official cop-12-01-add2-en.pdf _blank>in one document. Business is being addressed in quite a number of decisions and topics, but just as in previous years there is one decision especially dedicated to the role of companies (item 29, p. 132 et seq). It underlines several issues already stated in previous decisions and acknowledges the ongoing work of existing initiatives like ours. What is new, however, is a special focus on reporting. Both Governments and companies are asked to step up their efforts to better integrate biodiversity into company reporting. The member companies of 'Biodiversity in Good Company' already report on their objectives and activities in <link http: www.business-and-biodiversity.de en activities leadership-declaration _blank>their progess reports to the Leadership Declaration they signed.

COP 12 will also see the publication and discussion of the "Global Biodiversity Outlook 4 (GBO4)", one of the most important CBD publications. This GBO edition will be a kind of interim report on the implementation of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets.