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(Editor's note: On April 12 this year, the Shanghai Stock Exchange, Shenzhen Stock Exchange and Beijing Stock Exchange issued the "Guidelines for Sustainable Development Reporting of Listed Companies" (hereinafter referred to as the "Guidelines"), which will be implemented from May 1, 2024. The "Guidelines" list a total of 21 topics involving the three major aspects of environment, society and governance, and point out the main direction of sustainable development of listed companies. Based on this, the Meike Brand Value Research Institute has selected some innovative and extremely important topics, and through in-depth research on the 2023 ESG reports of listed companies, launched a series of reports on "New Observations on ESG Key Topics", aiming to explore new cases and new practices worthy of reference for listed companies, in order to provide more references for improving the level of ESG governance within and outside the industry. This issue launches the "Ecosystem and Biodiversity Protection" series of "New Observations on ESG Key Topics")

Every Economic Reporter Xu Xiaoxiao Every Economic Editor Liang Xiao

Li Xin is the former principal of Guanping Primary School in Dadugang Township, Xishuangbanna. In May 2024, when he was about to retire, the school received a special gift - a wall of love.

This nine-year rural school is located in the Mengyangzi area of ​​Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve, surrounded by Asian elephants’ feeding grounds, and the children are in danger of Asian elephants entering the school. This gift from Yili Group and the China Green Foundation protects the safety of children in the Asian elephant habitat community and explores more possibilities for the coexistence of nature, wildlife and humans.

In the new stage of high-quality development, the issue of ecosystem and biodiversity protection has attracted more and more attention from the capital market. Listed companies actively participate in ecosystem and biodiversity protection, which can reduce the risk of resource depletion, discover new business opportunities, and ensure the sustainability of the company's long-term operations.

The Meike Brand Value Research Institute found through analyzing the 2023 ESG reports of listed companies that building green mines, making full use of artificial intelligence technology and paying attention to animal welfare are innovative measures for companies to protect ecosystems and biodiversity.

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How can enterprises do a good job in biodiversity management? Shi Yichen, deputy director of the International Institute of Green Finance of the Central University of Finance and Economics and chief economist of the China Finance Green Index, made five suggestions in an interview with the reporter of the "Daily Economic News": First, carry out relevant activities with the help of ecological management thinking; second, consider applying to join relevant advocacy organizations at home and abroad; third, sort out the dependence of different links on resources and the impact on nature, and then conduct scenario simulation and risk analysis; fourth, invite various types of professional institutions to jointly carry out surveys, risk management and other contents; fifth, improve biodiversity governance from the perspective of the supplier industry chain, and enhance relevant resilience and comprehensive management capabilities.

Green mine construction: companies explore multiple models

Mining is a key focus of ESG issues related to ecosystem and biodiversity protection. This is because mining projects will directly and indirectly affect biodiversity throughout their life cycle. Direct or primary impacts include land clearing activities, direct discharge of water pollution, and air pollution, which are usually easy to identify; indirect or secondary impacts include social or environmental changes caused by mining operations, which are usually more difficult to identify.

The construction of green mines has become the only way to promote the sustainable development of the mining industry. In April 2024, the Ministry of Natural Resources and seven other departments jointly issued the "Notice on Further Strengthening the Construction of Green Mines", which clearly put forward new requirements for the comprehensive promotion of green mine construction, requiring that by the end of 2028, 90% of large mines and 80% of medium-sized mines with certificates in production will meet green mine standards. The question is: How to make mines "green" and "increase green"? From the ESG annual reports of listed companies, we can see different explorations of companies.

For example, Baofeng Energy is exploring "intelligent management". Its independently developed intelligent coal blending management system realizes precise, intelligent and scientific coal blending from multiple dimensions such as procurement, quality, and production process parameters, significantly improving work efficiency. By the end of 2023, the company has built one national green mine and two autonomous region-level green mines.

Chalco's exploration is "mine reclamation". For example, its Guangxi branch mining company has greatly increased the area of ​​arable land by reclaiming and greening the goaf, and implemented a new integrated mining-reclamation process to minimize the time that mining occupies land. The company added 3 provincial green mines in 2023, 2 mines passed provincial acceptance, and 4 mines met the conditions for application and acceptance.

Zijin Mining is exploring the "full life cycle management" of mines. That is, before acquiring a project, it will consider the impact of project construction on biodiversity, and include more factors such as sustainable ecological balance, ecological functions, and environmental background in the environmental due diligence content; the project construction period will also be included in the core scope of management to reduce the risk of accidental departure from EMS (energy management system) control; during the mine closure stage, it will conduct in-depth analysis of social value factors to leave green and sustainable resources for the local area.

In April 2024, the Ministry of Natural Resources and other departments simultaneously released the "National Green Mine Construction Evaluation Indicators". Although there are "ecological function" assessment requirements in the "mine geological environment governance and restoration and land reclamation", there are no clear statistical and recording requirements for genes and species for biodiversity in the entire indicator. In Shi Yichen's view, this will make it difficult to dynamically monitor and accurately evaluate the effectiveness of ecological restoration in the later restoration and reclamation process. Biodiversity and mine life cycle management can only be mentioned indirectly, and have not been included in the relevant indicators as direct and key management elements.

Shi Yichen reminded that different minerals have different impacts on the ecological environment. For example, water pollution from aluminum mining is much higher than that from copper mining. Each mining project has its own unique regional ecosystem, and the impact and assessment on biodiversity also deserves specific discussion. It is not convenient to use a unified statement to address it.

Have you heard of judging the intentions of animals by their sounds? Do you know how to efficiently observe endangered species? In the era of artificial intelligence, related cutting-edge technologies are also widely used in ecosystem and biodiversity protection.

As a leading company in artificial intelligence, iFlytek has strengthened its analysis and research on animal diversity based on its leading sound event detection and recognition technology. Through the calls of animals, the company can classify animals and make certain predictions about their intentions. To this end, iFlytek organized the "Bird Call Recognition" Challenge to facilitate large-scale spatiotemporal monitoring of birds.

Sumatra, Indonesia, is one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth. Frequent human activities have put all kinds of creatures at risk of survival. Hikvision has cooperated with the Forest Sustainable Development Organization and WWF Indonesia to install video sensing equipment on Sumatra to continuously monitor endangered species including the Sumatran elephant, providing technical support for biodiversity conservation activities.

Lenovo Group hopes to successfully create a replicable intelligent solution for biodiversity conservation. In the 2023/2024 fiscal year, Lenovo Group will apply AI technology to the protection of rare animals such as Yangtze River dolphins, snow leopards, and manuls. It will work with China National Geographic Channel to produce the world's first Yangtze River dolphin ecological map and observation guide, and will work with Xining Wildlife Park to build a highland elf smart protection station, creating a replicable example of intelligent ecological protection through AI technology innovation.

Paying attention to animal welfare: some companies have built "elephant canteens"

According to the World Organization for Animal Health, animal welfare refers to how animals adapt to their environment and meet their basic natural needs. A high level of animal welfare requires disease immunity and veterinary treatment, appropriate housing, management, nutrition, humane treatment and humane slaughter.

According to a previous report by China News Network, Vincent Martin, then the FAO representative to China and North Korea, once said that animal welfare is not an isolated system. Animal welfare is closely related to food safety, health, environment, ecology and other systems. It is one of the components of the path to sustainable development. The FAO advocates the principles of "one welfare" and "one health", and advocates coordinating the relationship between human, animal and environmental health on the same platform.

As the first Chinese company to sign the United Nations' "Business and Biodiversity Commitment", Yili Group has put forward the public welfare concept of "whoever nature needs, we are". In an interview with the reporter of "Daily Economic News", the relevant person in charge of the company introduced that in 2021, Yili and the China Green Foundation jointly launched the "Yili Homeland Action·Save Endangered Asian Elephants" public welfare project, which will protect Asian elephants and their homes through measures such as restoration of Asian elephant habitats, rescue of wild elephants, improvement of protection capabilities, community development, and popularization of natural science for the public. So far, the project has set up a 350-acre "elephant canteen".

It is reported that the "Elephant Canteen" has welcomed groups of wild Asian elephants many times.

Rainbow Foods announced an industry-leading new ESG goal to sell cage-free eggs in all of its 111 supermarkets. According to the goal, the company will convert 80% of its purchased eggs to cage-free by the end of 2030, and reach 100% by 2035 or earlier. This means that Rainbow Foods has become the first state-owned listed company to set a 100% cage-free egg policy for animal welfare, taking an important step in promoting the sustainability of healthy food procurement.

In addition, many pharmaceutical companies, such as Shanghai Pharmaceuticals and Corning Life Sciences, have pledged to strictly follow animal experiment ethics and regulate the rational use of experimental animals in terms of animal welfare.

In terms of how companies can do a good job in biodiversity management, Shi Yichen believes that in-depth and mature understanding and talent support are the basis for capacity building. To this end, he provided five suggestions:

First, the company can use different ecological management thinking to carry out company operations and management activities; second, the company can consider applying to join relevant domestic and foreign advocacy organizations, and use organizational principles as a guide to improve the company's internal biodiversity governance system and management policies; third, the company can sort out its own dependence on natural resources and its impact on nature from the perspective of the macro value chain and micro industrial chain, and then set up scenario simulations and risk analysis; fourth, biodiversity issues are relatively complex, and the company can invite various types of professional institutions to jointly carry out surveys, risk management, natural capital quantification and other contents; fifth, from the perspective of the supplier industry chain, improve biodiversity governance, enhance biodiversity resilience and comprehensive management capabilities.

Daily Economic News