Shana Gavron on the business value of biodiversity

Our guest this episode is Shana Gavron, founder of Endangered Wildlife OU. Shana explains, "Biodiversity could be our greatest employer, our greatest employee and our greatest trade partner. And it doesn't ask for anything except to be allowed to do what it has to do." Shana is leading the way in creating a new universal system for measuring biodiversity by calculating reliable financial values of biodiversity and helping businesses to integrate biodiversity into their reporting and decision-making. Biodiversity often provides the most efficient solutions to our business challenges, so why don't we maximise our ROI by letting it do what it's support to do? For instance the best way to keep elephants from crossing over into farm land is to put in beehives (rather than use land mines). And in some areas with deforestation tarantulas are moving onto football pitches and if they are left there (instead of being eradicated) you can naturally reduce the number of scorpion related deaths and injuries to the people who use the pitch. Shana shares a simple way to quickly measure the biodiversity in our areas - check your windscreen for insects after a long drive. By this measure the UK's biodiversity is definitely going down significantly. Shana is in the unique position of being able to perceive biodiversity from a financial and environmental perspective with 15+ years’ investment banking experience as a sell side institutional equity analyst for leading Scandinavian and Baltic banks. She has combined this knowledge with her expertise in financial modelling and her academic background in wildlife management to drive the development of the Endangered Wildlife OU’s Biodiversity Valuator. She completed undergraduate studies in behavioural psychology and neuroscience, holds an MPA in Public and Economic Policy from the London School of Economics & Political Science. She specialises in innovation and systems dynamics for inclusive economic development. This episode is hosted by Anna Mullenneaux and Paul Skinner, founders of the MarketingKind community.