Episode 74: The Role of B Corporations In Conservation And Communities With Keith Bowers
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Subscribe to Rewilding Earth Podcast: Spotify | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | Email | RSS
Keith Bowers, Biohabitats founder
About Keith
In the early 1980s, an outdoorsy, nature-loving undergrad named Keith Bowers had an epiphany. Keith had been studying landscape architecture at the University of Virginia when he met Ed Garbisch, a pioneering practitioner of marsh restoration along the Chesapeake Bay.
“Wait a minute,” thought Keith. “I can apply my education to restoring the places I love?”
After graduating in 1982, Keith started Biohabitats, an ecological restoration company. 36 years later, with a mission to “restore the earth and inspire ecological stewardship,” Biohabitats has become one of the most recognized names in ecological restoration and conservation.
Topics
- Why conservationists need to work more tightly with companies to achieve the lofty goals ahead.
- What is a B Corporation or “B-Corp?”
- Why we can’t wait for regulations to force businesses to do the right thing.
- How to be a profitable while giving back to the planet, workers, and communities.
- Environment, people, and business as “nested” pieces of a whole, rather than business as usual.
Extra Credit
- Benefit Corporations – A benefit corporation is a legal tool to create a solid foundation for long term mission alignment and value creation.
- B-Corps (Biohabitats B-Corps score) – Certified B Corporations are a new kind of business that balances purpose and profit. They are legally required to consider the impact of their decisions on their workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment. This is a community of leaders, driving a global movement of people using business as a force for good.
- 1% for the Planet (Biohabitats) – 1% for the Planet is a global movement inspiring businesses and individuals to support environmental solutions through annual memberships and everyday actions.
- JUST – Just is a nutrition label for socially just and equitable organizations.
- Biohabitats 2019 Annual Benefit Report – The annual benefit report is the backbone of a benefit corporation, as it shows how Biohabitats is creating a public benefit.
- Headwaters – A Guide to Biohabitats’ Benefits, Policies and Cultural Practices
- Earth Charter – The Earth Charter (EC) is a document with sixteen principles powering a global movement.
- Universal Declaration of Rights of Mother Earth – Rights of Nature is the recognition and honoring that Nature has rights.
- Teal Organization – A Teal organization is an organizational theory that advocates worker’s self-management, promotes inner wholeness and embrace an evolutionary purpose
A reminder of what’s at stake, how we got here, and who’s business it is:
Director of Digital Outreach (D.O.D.O.) for The Rewilding Institute
Host and Producer of the Rewilding Earth Podcast
Jack started Rewilding work as Executive Director of Sky Island Alliance in the mid-1990’s, organizing the Sky Island Wildlands Network design, ripping up illegal roads on forest service lands, installing wolf acclimatization pens on Ted Turner’s Ladder Ranch & conducting howling surveys to help make way for the final stage of the Lobo reintroduction program in the Southwest.
Through the years, Jack has worked with Dave Foreman and the Rewilding Gang to further Rewilding initiatives and education.
Fascinating. Thanks Keith and Jack.
Mr. Bowers got his BSLA at WEST Virginia University. Not the University of Virginia. (Let’s gooooooooo Mountaineers!)