Biodiversity and Ecosystems
Biodiversity is the foundation for numerous ecosystem services, for example air quality, climate, pollination, water purification and soil formation. We as a chemical company depend on ecosystem services and have an impact on them. These integral issues also cover a part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - especially in SDG 12 “Responsible consumption and production”, SDG 14 “Life below water” and SDG 15 “Life on land”.
How we address biodiversity
BASF contributes to preserving and improving biodiversity and promotes the sustainable utilization of natural resources by:
- Recognizing the importance of natural capital.
- Supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) as well as the goals of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
- Continuously optimizing our production processes by implementing a variety of measures at our sites. In this way, we contribute to energy efficiency, resource conservation and climate protection, reduce emissions into air and water and avoid waste generation.
- Empowering our customers with innovative products and services to use natural resources even more efficiently.
- Committing to resource conservation by making it an important element of our corporate strategy and our research and development activities.
- Supporting the establishment of education programs to raise environmental awareness.
- Implementing projects to encourage the protection of biodiversity at the local level.
- Integrating biodiversity into our sustainability management tools.
BASF investigates production sites adjacent to Internationally Protected Areas
We periodically investigate our production sites around the world to revise which are located near internationally protected areas.
Our latest evaluation revealed that 2% of our production sites (excluding Oil & Gas) are adjacent to a Ramsar Site and 2% to a Category I, II or III protected area of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). None of our production sites are adjacent to a UNESCO protected area. Our 2015 analyses revealed no impact of our activities on biodiversity in the investigated areas.
