Enhancing biodiversity at business sites: What are the options, and which of these do stakeholders prefer?

Biotic aspects of business site environments - flora and fauna and the landscape they inhabit - are not yet fully addressed in sustainable business site design. In this study a multi-criteria analysis (MCA) framework was developed with which scenarios were assessed that include various measures (elaborating five defined design and management principles) to enhance biodiversity at business site. Discrimination among the scenarios was based on socioeconomic and environmental criteria, both monetary and nonmonetary. With this MCA framework, it was illustrated how different stakeholder groups (companies, employees, local governments, neighbors and environmental NGOs) in the Netherlands may rank scenarios for enhancing biodiversity at business sites, based on stakeholders' preferences. This ranking of scenarios proved rather robust, as in an uncertainty analyses (run for a large range of both weights and scores) the ranking remains the same for most runs. Scenarios that include a large amount of urban green emerged as the favorite of all stakeholders, including companies and local governments. Besides it was found that implementing measures to enhance biodiversity may be acceptable only if combined with other 'urban green' functions (predominately related to 'recreation' and 'health and well-being') and if tailored to the required functional appearance of the business site environment (in terms of 'external appearance' and 'tidiness'). Thus, the study broadens the concept of sustainable business site development by focusing on strategies to enhance biodiversity and landscape values at business sites. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.