Mark van Oorschot

As a biologist, I am working at PBL on Dutch policies for conservation of biodiversity and sustainable use of ecosystems and the services they provide to society. In recent years I have been particularly concerned with the role that business and finance can play in this. It is expected in both national and international nature policies that this group of actors can play an important role in reaching biodiversity targets, as part of their corporate social responsibility efforts. There is a two-pronged relationship in this - on the one hand, it is about the impact of economic activities on biodiversity and, on the other, the economy's dependence on ecosystems and their services.

I work primarily in an international context, and have investigated for example, the effects of Dutch consumption on global biodiversity, and how making our trade in resources more sustainable can help to mitigate impacts. Certification and standards for sustainable production had my special interest, as they form the core of broadly accepted systems to assure sustainable international supply-chains.

Previously, I have worked on modeling global biodiversity loss and options for reducing that by sustainable forest management, or mitigating climate change with the use of bioenergy. Assessments on these analyses have been published on behalf of international organizations such as the OECD, UNEP and the CBD.