Private sector partnerships

Industrial scale private sector businesses often have a profound affect on the environment by transforming land-cover, extracting and exporting raw materials, constructing roads, and through their employment practices that often raise local population density and consumption of natural resources. In the case of timber companies, they are often the de facto and de jure managers of most of the forest estate outside of protected areas, and the direct and indirect effects of their business practices can, thus, have profound adverse impacts on vast areas of forest.

Willing or not, logging and mining operations have facilitated commercial hunting by building roads into once inaccessible areas of forest with abundant wildlife, and by allowing hunters to travel on company vehicles and to transport their bushmeat to urban markets. Moreover, salaried employees and their extended families who live in company camps within or bordering concessions constitute a significant local increase in demand for bushmeat. Private sector facilitated commercial hunting of wildlife for food risks the loss of most large bodied mammals from forests outside of protected areas.

Seeking ways to reduce the environmental impacts of industrial scale private sector enterprises, in other words 'greening' private sector practices, has the potential to generate significant conservation payoffs.