On November 7th and 8th, the European Business and Nature Summit (EBNS), a two-day conference on business, was held in Madrid, biodiversity and natural capital co-organised by the European Business and Biodiversity Platform (European Commission), Ecoacsa, Fundación Empresa y Clima, Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry of Transition [ through the Spanish Enterprise and Biodiversity Initiative [ and the Ministry of Environment of Finland.
The conference, which also included the participation of Ferrovial, served as a regional platform to strengthen the key role that companies have in supporting nature conservation and its sustainable use. The EBNS brought together representatives of companies and financial institutions, but also governments and civil society where best business practices were shared and actions to halt biodiversity loss were facilitated.
Valentin Alfaya, Director of Quality and Environment of Ferrovial participated in the panel “Towards a common ground in approaches to measuring biodiversity for companies”, where he presented the INCA Project (Integrated Natural Capital Assessment) developed by Ferrovial in collaboration with EIT Climate KIC, Creando Redesre and USAL. The methodology will allow different industrial sectors to better assess the debt owed to nature due to the negative impact on a given territory. Ferrovial is the pioneer in developing this type of methodology.
After listening to the expectations of the participating parties, environmental associations, companies, governments, banks and investment funds, it became clear that the INCA project is one of the few concrete methodologies and with a solid technical base, available today to materialize the quantification of the environmental impact in economic terms.
