Preserving biodiversity
Worldwide biological diversity is shrinking at an unprecedented rate. According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the rate of extinction of species is one thousand times higher that it would be naturally. Faced with this major challenge, Veolia Environnement is developing an approach based on characterizing the impacts of its activities and integrating biodiversity managementwithin its environmental management system.
This challenge applies to all of the Group's activities
- Veolia Environnement has adopted a policy of integrating protection of biodiversity on land occupied by its facilities at the project design stage, particularly through its approach towards sustainable urban planning.
When the Group takes over existing facilities, it works in cooperation with its municipal or industrial clients to improve their integration within the natural environment. - Through its activities,Veolia Environnement is making a positive contribution to the protection of biodiversity by reducing the amount of pollution affecting ecosystems and taking into account its secondary impacts (residual pollution contained in our waste, consumption of natural resources) that we need to control and reduce.
Protection of biodiversity is included in the commitments made in the company's Sustainable Development Charter.
Characterization of our impacts
The use of tools such as the "green register", enables stakeholders concerned with urban development to adapt their strategies.
Veolia Environnement R&D is continuing to make progress in evaluating its impacts.
In addition to classical physicochemical and bacteriological approaches, the Group has now acquired good expertise of tools for evaluating its releases into aquatic environments, its GHG emissions and its products (organic fertilizers and secondary raw materials). Ecotoxicity tests used for forecasts are complemented by biological tools indicating the condition of the aquatic or land environment.
The Group is also working with many university and institutional partners to benefit from the most advanced expertise, particularly in the field of ecosystems modelling, a discipline that enables us to better understand their complexity and to predict changes to them.
Management of biodiversity in our facilities
Preservation of ecosystems on Veolia sites
Veolia Water UK in the United Kingdom pays special attention to protected species and natural habitats present on its sites.
Our geographic information system (GIS) references our main facilities' position relative to areas of ecological interest and already includes more than 1,200 priority facilities. The progressive integration of this tool into our environmental information system (used for environmental reporting and audits) will enable its broader use by operational staff.
Since 2005, Veolia Environnement has been implementing actions aimed at increasing awareness of its managerial grade employees and promoting good practices. The Group deploys a questionnaire to collect quantitative and qualitative information about actions related to biodiversity. The results collected by Veolia Environmental Services from more than 300 sites are useful for evaluating the awareness level of operational staff towards this challenge and for identifying actions that can be shared (for example developing best practices guides).
The Group is developing a methodology for systematically evaluating the impact of its priority facilities on biodiversity. This methodology will integrate local characteristics of the natural environment and methods of development and management of the site so as to enable the definition of an adapted action plan and measurement of results obtained through the definition of performance monitoring indicators. The methodology will gradually be enriched by the results of R&D work currently in progress. The Group will define a deployment scope in 2008, and implementation objectives for 2011.
Importance of biodiversity in our activities
Treatment of effluents by plant means (Organica)
The Hungarian Organica company has been a subsidiary of Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies since 2007, and is specialized in a biological technique to treat domestic wastewater through the use of complex ecosystems.
Every species performs a number of functions that are fundamental for a balanced ecosystem. In doing so, nature performs services that are useful for our activities, for example through the ability of ecosystems to clean water or regulate air quality.
Biodiversity thus contributes to facilitating our work (biological treatments of untreated water and wastewater, the use of ponds or grassy strips for their self cleaning capability, etc.), and can enable the use of simpler and less expensive treatment processes (water and energy consumption).
Economic valorization of ecosystem services
The Orée association, the French Institute of Biodiversity (IFB)
and Veolia Environnement initiated a workgroup in 2006 entitled
"How to integrate biodiversity into business strategies"; this association is composed of about twenty companies, public communities and associations. The objective is to evaluate relationships between business and biodiversity. A guide on economic tools to be implemented in order to benefit from this type of interdependence will be published in 2008.
Veolia Environnement has also initiated cooperation with the economic research laboratory of the University of Columbia, New York (CEMTPP) on the subject of economic applications of ecosystem services.
Degree of commitment of Veolia Environnement
