ASUS and Biodiversity

Businesses depend on natural resources and ecosystem services, collectively known as natural capital. Natural Capital Protocal explicitly recognizes the importance of biodiversity for the wellbeing and resilience of natural capital. Biodiversity can increase resilience to extreme weather events such as floods and droughts, and support essential processes such as carbon cycling, water cycling and soil formation. Biodiversity is therefore not only a component of natural capital, but also the fundamental basis for ecosystem services.

As economic development continues to expand, pressure on the natural and ecological environment is increasing. Major impacts include the over-exploitation of food and minerals, the use of fossil fuels leading to an increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, and serious threat to biodiversity. According to the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) 2021 report¹, the rate of extinction of biological species has been gradually increasing since the 1950s, reaching a rate 100 to 1,000 times higher. Between 1970 and 2016, the number of species worldwide declined by an average of 68%.

With this in mind, the United Nations established the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992 during the United Nations Earth Summit. The Convention established three primary goals for biodiversity: the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of biological resources, and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources. Unfortunately, the Convention did not provide explicit and precise guidance on these three objectives.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework was established at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (CBD COP15) held in Montreal, Canada in 2022. This framework outlines key strategies and targets for the implementation of biodiversity actions through 2030. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework sets more specific targets: “By 2030, ensure that at least 30% of degraded areas in terrestrial, inland water, marine and coastal ecosystems are successfully restored to enhance biodiversity, ecosystem functions and services, ecological integrity and connectivity.” The framework also requires companies to regularly monitor biodiversity and environmental quality. This enables them to assess and manage biodiversity risks and minimize the impact on their operations.

The business community also supports the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, recognizing the risks and opportunities that biodiversity presents to business. Therefore, in 2023, the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) published the TNFD Guidance Framework, which adopted the same disclosure framework as the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). This framework includes pillars such as Governance, Strategy, Risk and Impact Management, Metrics and Targets enabling companies to assess the impact of biodiversity risks on their operations according to their impact and dependence on biodiversity and to propose appropriate actions.

ASUS has conducted Environmental Profit and Loss (EP&L) assessments to evaluate the environmental impact of its operations and supply chain. This year, the assessment of ASUS’ value chain operations on the stock of natural resources will be expanded. The LEAP methodology (Locate, Evaluate, Assess, and Prepare), recommended by the TNFD reporting framework, was used in this report. This methodology thoroughly evaluated the impact of ASUS' value chain operations on natural capital.

Environmental Management Milestone

ASUS has taken a systematic approach to environmental management. Since 2008, the Company's operation centers received ISO14001 certification for environmental management systems. Since 2013, supplier environmental footprint assessment has been integrated into the supply chain management process. Since 2018, the EP&L Project has been initiated, with a specific focus on notebook computer products. The inaugural EP&L Report has been published.

To fully understand the overall environmental impact of ASUS' operations and suppliers, we have added one category of major products to the data collection each year to expand the scope to 90% of product revenues. In 2019, ISO 14001 environmental management system certification has been added as a mandatory requirement for eligible suppliers. After CBD COP15 conference held in 2022, ASUS began to focus on biodiversity issues. In 2023, ASUS participated in the Taiwan Nature Positive Initiative, launched by BCSD Taiwan, to gain a deeper understanding of relevant international trends and methodologies. In line with the latest TNFD 2024 reporting framework, ASUS has implemented a biodiversity policy and expanded its efforts to identify biodiversity issues. This ensures that the environmental impacts of ASUS' operations and suppliers are effectively integrated into ASUS' sustainability management framework.

Biodiversity Related Initiatives