uk bat.com - Managing biodiversity

Managing biodiversity

The Biodiversity Partnership helps us understand and minimise our impacts on biodiversity

The success of our business now and in the future depends on biodiversity. Biodiversity provides resources like clean water, healthy soils and timber. Business has a responsibility to minimise its negative impact on biodiversity, as species and communities also depend on these resources.

By protecting the biodiversity around tobacco growing areas, we have the opportunity to help make sure our future supplies of tobacco are secure.

Group Biodiversity Statement

Our Group Biodiversity Statement outlines our aim to embed biodiversity conservation across our business.

The Statement covers:

• Ensuring that our business complies with all international and local biodiversity laws;
• Understanding our biodiversity impacts and our impacts on ecosystem services;
• Engaging with stakeholders such as farmers and conservation organisations;
• Devising action plans to avoid, minimise, mitigate or offset our biodiversity impacts;
• Sharing information with suppliers to help minimise our impact throughout the supply chain.

Biodiversity Statement (26 kb)

Biodiversity Partnership

Since 2001, we have worked with three NGOs in the British American Tobacco Biodiversity Partnership: Fauna & Flora International, the Tropical Biology Association and Earthwatch Institute. We donated £1 million per year to the Partnership in its first five years and £1.5 million per year for the five years from 2006. In 2010, we agreed the scope of work for the next five years of the Partnership, with a commitment of £1.5 million per year.

The Partnership seeks to address some of the challenging issues surrounding the conservation and management of biodiversity within agricultural landscapes and the ecosystems on which we depend.

Read more about the work of the Biodiversity Partnership.

Biodiversity risk and opportunity assessments

Our biodiversity risk and opportunity assessment tool was developed by the Biodiversity Partnership to help our companies identify, assess and address risks arising from their impacts and dependencies on biodiversity and ecosystems in and around their leaf-growing operations. All our tobacco leaf growing operations have completed assessments and initiatives are in place to address the issues identified.

Read more about our Biodiversity risk and opportunity assessments.

Biodiversity projects

As a business we focus on addressing our own biodiversity impacts and dependencies and those of our contracted farmers. But through our Biodiversity Partnership, we also address challenging biodiversity issues through projects with external stakeholders in the wider agricultural landscapes and ecosystems on which we depend. You can read about these projects in detail on the Partnership’s website: www.batbiodiversity.org .

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