Conservation will ultimately only work if it makes economic sense. The bottom line always trumps sentiment. Traditionally business and biodiversity have been seen as each other's greatest enemies: business = logging, while biodiversity = cumbersome anti-business legislation. The Foundation will alter this perspective: conservation is good for your health, the planet's health, and for the bottom line.

Evolution's Pharmacopeia

Natural environments continue to harbor a host of potentially useful substances. Through licensing agreements, the Foundation will support bioprospecting by ensuring that all parties -- the business and the country who provides access to its biodiversity -- are fairly remunerated. The potential for unleashing a flood of drugs and other useful substances that are derived from nature will continue to be a source for future discovery: the Foundation will work towards this goal

Environmental Entrepreneurs

The Foundation will foster an emerging category of business professional: the environmental entrepreneur, whose priorities, while still business-based, lie with the environment. As the consuming public becomes more educated and more discerning, so the marketing value of the environment will increase. The outcome is important: more people caring about the environment and more businesses (or corporations) responding to that increase in environmental interest.

Technology Serving Conservation
As Ed Wilson has pointed out, technology has created the problems in biodiversity, but it’s also technology that is now going to solve those problems. The Foundations strategies and initiatives directly support the use of high technology to help understand and protect biodiversity.