76 How should we categorize the environment, as stakeholder?

The primary model we used for stakeholder categorization involved asking whether a stakeholder was high or low interest, and high or low power. Because outside of fiction there is no Lorax, to “speak for the trees” or Ents to shepherd the forest, the environment takes no interest on its own and resists this type of categorization. Thus, when categorizing the environment as a stakeholder, it may be helpful to consider the indirect interest of the environment through other stakeholders. For instance, if environmental issues are key to employees, and if employees are a high-interest stakeholder, a company might classify the environment as a high-interest stakeholder. Similarly, if a company deals with resource extraction such as farming or logging, environmental concerns are key to the company’s core business, and so the environment would likely be considered a high-power stakeholder. For other businesses, considering the indirect effect may be useful. If employees, for example, are considered a high-power stakeholder of the company and care deeply about environmental concerns, it would likely be wise to categorize the environment as a high-power stakeholder.