Sustainability

Biodiversity and Ecosystems

Recently, the monarch butterfly population has declined, in part, because of the loss of habitat, changing weather patterns, and the reduction in milkweed. Monarchs need milkweed for summer forage and larval feeding sites. Reestablishing the plant can positively impact the population, and BASF is committed to helping the process.

Biodiversity is the basis of various ecosystem services, such as the availability of clean water and renewable resources or the preservation of air, water and soil quality. This important fact is also taken into account in the 17 sustainability goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. Above all, Goal 12 ("Responsible Consumption"), Goal 14 ("Life Under Water") and Goal 15 ("Life on Land") are aimed at biodiversity. As a company in the chemical industry, we too influence these achievements and depend on them to the same extent. 

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How we address biodiversity

BASF supports the preservation of ecosystems and promotes the sustainable use of natural resources:

  • 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. 4% of our production sites are adjacent to a Ramsar Site and 1% 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.