The global organization World Wildlife Fund International, charged with saving the planet's dwindling and besieged wildlife, has just appointed a veteran international banker as its new president on Sunday.
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Pavan Sukhdev, 57, who worked during a quarter century at ANZ Banking and Deutsche Bank, followed by a decade working with the UN, is convinced that the private sector holds the key to saving nature.
"Corporations are the single most important institution of our times," the Indian-born economist told AFP during an interview at the headquarters of WWF France, on the outskirts of Paris. "Their leaders — CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, the 'C-suite' generally — are setting the direction in which we are driving."
Up to now, Sukhdev acknowledges, that direction has mostly taken us down the road to environmental ruin.
Our species is emptying the sea of fish, disgorging 40 billion tonnes of planet-warming CO2 into the atmosphere each year, and relentlessly polluting soil, sea and air.
When it comes to wildlife, humanity's appetites and expanding footprint have triggered the first mass extinction event since a giant meteorite wiped out terrestrial dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago.
These "externalities" — in the bloodless lingo of economists — of sustained growth have mushroomed into an existential threat for many species, including homo sapiens.
"Today's corporations inflict significant negative externalities on the planet," said Sukhdev. "They need to recognize that responsibility."
If C-suite executives are only now beginning to think that way, it's party because of the "conventional wisdom" that a corporation is merely a machine to make money for shareholders — a notion he denies. Just as humans are not defined by their need to breathe, Sukhdev argued, corporations should not be limited to the drive for profits.
WWF International, he said, is a powerful platform for nudging business in the right direction.
"Shaming is not outside of our remit. But neither is encouragement," he said.
As Sukhdev transitioned from banking to environmental economics, he was commissioned in 2007 by the "G8+5" forum of nations, which included China and India, to investigate the economics of biodiversity.
His highly influential report developed the concept of "ecosystem services" long taken for granted — mangroves protecting coastal communities during storms, aquifers providing drinking water, bees pollinating commercial crops.
The value of these vanishing resources, he concluded, must be entered into society's — and corporate — balance sheets.
"It's not about putting a price on nature," as critics of the concept contend, Sukhdev said. "It's for recognizing the value, and that it has a public benefit."
Scientists estimate that humanity uses nearly twice as much of this natural capital as can be replenished by Earth each year, creating an ever deeper ecological debt.