Revealing Plato’s ‘Shadow Kingdom’: Rendering Pandemic Risk Explicit in Extinction Engagement

The framework’s focus on enhancing biodiversity, protecting species, protecting ecosystems from biodiversity loss and extinction, and protecting habitats implicitly drives business practices to protect humanity from global and local risks arising from the erosion of ecosystems, species and their habitats. In addition to concerns around transmission of coronavirus from land mammals and bats to humans, there is also scientific evidence that marine mammals, such as dolphins and beluga whales, may carry similar diseases. Institutional investors have, in recent years, escalated their engagement with investee companies on environmental, social and governance issues. The interviewees felt that the voluntary environment for extinction accounting and extinction engagement had failed to encourage adequate practice in these areas and that legislation, a mandatory approach, was now necessary in the wake of the current pandemic. The latest version of the extinction accounting framework and the extinction engagement framework may be adapted to incorporate pandemic risk management.