Prince Charles launches 'Terra Carta' for business

Prince Charles has called on businesses to sign up to Terra Carta - a charter which provides a framework for organisations looking to “bring prosperity into harmony with nature”.

Devising its name from the historic Magna Carta – which inspired a belief in the fundamental rights and liberties of people more than 800 years ago – the Terra Carta aims to give fundamental rights and value to nature, ensuring a lasting impact and tangible legacy for this generation.

Signatories, which already include BlackRock, Unilever and AstraZeneca, will agree to take almost 100 actions to become more sustainable by 2030. These include supporting international agreements on the climate, biodiversity and desertification, and backing efforts to protect half of the planet by 2050. Another action of the charter was initiated at the One Planet Summit in Paris earlier this year with the creation of a Natural Capital Investors Alliance, which intends to raise US$10bn by 2022.

The charter provides a framework for the Sustainable Markets Initiative, Prince Charles launched last year, and marks 50 years of environmental campaigning by the royal. “The ‘Terra Carta’ offers the basis of a recovery plan that puts nature, people and planet at the heart of global value creation – one that will harness the precious, irreplaceable power of nature combined with the transformative innovation and resources of the private sector,” Prince Charles said.