MODERN businesses are “soulless corporations” that are in danger of becoming a “cancer” on society, a leading UN environmental official has warned.

Companies usually take a short-term view of the importance of the environment, said Pavan Sukhdev, head of the UN's investigation into how to stop the destruction of the natural world. This short-term thinking is seen in their lobbying against new policies that could slow environmental devastation, he said.

Sukhdev, formerly an adviser to the Indian government and now on sabbatical from Deutsche Bank, spoke as he prepares to publish one of the most eagerly awaited parts of his report — The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) for Business.

The report will be launched at the first Global Business of Biodiversity Symposium in London, where speakers will include environment secretary Caroline Spelman. She will highlight examples of businesses causing damage which imposes a huge cost on themselves and society — including an estimate that global destruction of forests costs the world's economies $2tr-$5tr a year.

Sukhdev told the Guardian that private businesses were too important as employers and payers of taxes to embark on a revolution, calling instead for society to take a greater responsibility for regulating the behaviour of companies. When the final report is published, at a biodiversity conference in October in Japan, Sukhdev will recommend major changes in the way companies are regulated.

“We have created a soulless corporation that does not have any innate reason to be ethical about anything,” he said. “The purpose of a corporation is to be selfish. That is law. So it's up to society and its leaders and thinkers to design the checks and balances that are needed to ensure that the corporation does not simply become cancerous.”

TEEB was set up after the success of the groundbreaking 2006 report by Sir Nicholas Stern for the UK government. The Stern report argued that the cost of tackling climate change would be one to two per cent of the global economy.

— The Guardian, London