Measuring biodiversity: research into approaches

Annex 1: Assessment criteria

EU Business @Biodiversity metric assessment criteria

This annex summarises the tools and approach assessment criteria identified in the Biodiversity Measurement Navigation Wheel for Business v2.0 (Lammerant et al., 2022)¹. The criteria are typically descriptive rather than intended to form the basis of a comparison on critical assessment. However, they can be used as the basis for developing criteria for assessing a biodiversity assessment tool or metric for Scotland. The approach is focused on business use, so requires further expansion to reflect policy and other end-users. Conversely, the scope of business uses (from products, site, to company and global impacts) may be broader than that required for a Scottish metric. Similarly, the approach has also been applied to ecosystem services tools which go beyond the scope of the current project.

Business context matrix

Combines business applications and organisational focus areas with maturity level

Business application table

Entries with an * reflect applications relevant to a Scottish metric

BA 1: Assessment of current biodiversity performance*

This is a very common business application. A company might do this just to demonstrate that it's doing well in terms of biodiversity performance, or simply to know its current level of performance. It could be part of BA 3 (tracking progress to targets), 4 (comparing options) or 7 (assessing risks and/or opportunities).

BA 2: Assessment of future biodiversity performance*

A company might be interested in assessing future biodiversity performance as a result of, for instance positive impact actions (e.g. restoration actions and/or actions that reduce pressures on biodiversity) or changes in its activities.

BA 3: Tracking progress to targets*

Companies that have set targets on biodiversity performance will need to track progress periodically. There are many categories of targets (see Biodiversity Ambitions Table in section 2.3.3).

BA 4: Comparing options

A company might want to compare the impact of different options on biodiversity. Although the focus of the biodiversity measurement tools is on measuring biodiversity impacts, any decisions will also rely on economic considerations. While some tools have explicitly integrated an economic indicator, other tools provide useful input for an internal cost benefit analysis. This BA can inform different levels of decision. Some examples of this BA:

• Which site offers least harm to biodiversity values?
• Which mitigation measures offer best result in terms of both ecological and economic terms?
• Which product scores best considering both biodiversity performance and economic return?
• Which investments in biodiversity conservation or restoration score offer the best value for money?
• Which supply chains are riskier from a biodiversity point of view?
• Which companies within a sector are performing best (according to rating agencies)?
• Which sectors are performing best in terms of biodiversity (for investment decisions by FIs)?

BA 5: Assessment / rating of biodiversity performance by third parties, using external data*

Third party assessment based on biodiversity criteria and fed with external data (into the absence of company data). This can be applied to compare company biodiversity performance across a sector. This is typically a BA applied by many financial institutions or by data providers to these FI

BA 6: Certification by third parties*

Third party certification based on auditing of a clearly established methodological approach.

BA 7: Screening and assessment of biodiversity risks and opportunities

Biodiversity measurement approaches can be used, for instance in case of due diligence assessments as part of mergers and acquisitions, or assessment undertaken by investors to differentiate between investment options, either based on the biodiversity performance or return on investment of different companies. This might also be undertaken by FI to assess biodiversity risk and inform pricing credit. This application often, but not always, overlaps with BA 4.

Organisational focus areas

The following organisational focus areas are included:

• Product/service
• Site/project
• Supply chain
• Corporate
• Portfolio/sector
• Country/region

Maturity levels

• Potential
• Emerging
• Mature

Pressures table

The following biodiversity pressures are identified. These reflect material impacts on biodiversity that may be due to business activities or reflect dependencies on biodiversity (i.e. adverse impact of climate change on biodiversity used by business).

These may be useful for understanding biodiversity issues in specific policy contexts such as on-farm biodiversity audits or for biodiversity reporting. They may also inform potential risks in developing net gain or habitat restoration projects, e.g. sites that are at greater vulnerability to one or more pressures.

• Land/sea use change
• Direct exploitation
• Biological resource use (e.g. overfishing)
• Water use
• Invasive alien species
• Pollution
• Atmospheric nitrogen deposition
• Nutrient emissions to water
• Climate change
• Other (e.g. habitat fragmentation, human encroachment, erosion, disturbance, pesticide use)

Biodiversity ambitions

This table includes relevant biodiversity targets:

• CBD post-2020 biodiversity targets
• Science based targets for nature
• No net loss/net gain
• Sustainable Development Goals
• ISO 14001, EMAS
• Voluntary standards at sector level or product level
• Voluntary biodiversity assessments and reporting frameworks
• Voluntary biodiversity agreements
• Regulating and permitting requirements
• Financial institutions requirements
• Site to landscape level commitments
• Specific corporate-level biodiversity commitments or engagements

The report does not carry out an assessment of the tools against these. Instead, the consequences of each target for tool selection is discussed with suitable tools either described or named where relevant.

Biodiversity scope

This table assesses whether the tools cover the following elements:

• Habitats/species
• Ecosystem services
• Genes

Only one tool (B-INTACT) measured genes and only qualitatively.

Biodiversity metrics

A number of biodiversity metrics are listed, these can either be generic (number of species, habitat extent), specific or applied by a particular approach (e.g. scores or indices), or potential approaches (i.e. were not used by any of the assessed approaches). The biodiversity metrics table (Table 15) also notes the resulting unit of biodiversity, its key points, uses and scale of analysis.

Table 15 Typology of metrics, what measured and example uses (source: Lammerant et al., 2022)

Table 15 Typology of metrics, what measured and example uses (source: Lammerant et al., 2022)

Type of metric	Commonly used metric	Unit of biodiversity	Used for	Scale of analysis
Species metrics	Number of individuals	Number of individuals of any one species	Simple easily communicated compensation for impacts to key species	Project or site scale
	STAR (Species Threat Abatement and Restoration metric)	Globally threatened species	Compare potential threat abatement and restoration actions, set science-based targets, and track progress over time.	Any scale
Extent * Condition metrics	Habitat hectares; quality hectares	Ecosystems	Measuring losses and gains within the same ecosystem type; used by many offset schemes	Project or site scale
	Mean Species Abundance (MSA)	All species	Impact assessment and LCA using GLOBIO model	Product, corporate or global scale
	Potentially Disappeared Fraction (PDF)	All species	Impact assessment and LCA using ReCiPe model	Product, corporate or global scale
Extent (or area) * Condition (or quality) * Significance metrics	Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII)	All Species	Impact assessment and LCA using the PREDICTS model	Product, corporate or global scale
	Biodiversity Impact Metric (BIM)	All species	Supply chain assessments and impact assessments	Product, corporate or global scale
	Site Biodiversity Condition Class	Habitats	Monitoring progress of quarry rehabilitation	Site scale
	BNGC score	Biodiversity value per m2	Measuring losses and gains within the same ecosystem type. Can be used to refine MSA model scores. Can be used to underpin 'nature positive' investment as offsets for achieving 'no net loss' or 'nature positive ambitions'	Site or project scale
	Biodiversity scoring system	Biodiversity units (BU)	Calculate the losses and gains in biodiversity unit value resulting from changes or actions which affect biodiversity, such as from development or changing the conservation management of a land holding	Site or project scale
Thematic metrics	Examples: Deforestation free commodities or supply chains; surface of regenerated or restored land; palm oil free etc.	km2 or %	To demonstrate compliance with specific biodiversity targets	Product, supply chain and corporate scale
	Agrobiodiversity Index (ABDI)	Agro-biodiversity	Sustainable agriculture	Site to corporate scale
Financial metrics	Environmental Profit and Loss accounts (EP&L)	Ecosystem services	LCA	Product, site, corporate or global scale
Combined state, pressure and response metrics (dashboard)	No single quantitative metric, with score cards used to identify risk areas. Appreciation of progress (e.g. colour codes, arrows…)	Habitat/ species/ population/ biodiversity management unit (BMU)	Monitoring progress to target	Site and project scale

Level of effort

This table relates to the level of expertise, accessibility, and costs of applying a tool or approach.

• Accessibility
• Full open source
• Open source with support
• Commercial
• Required expertise
• Internal – available within company
• External – external expertise most probably required
• External but training possible
• Costs
• External – high/medium/low
• Other – high/medium/low
• No costs

Sector applicability

This reflects the commonly occurring sectors where the tools and approaches have been applied:

• Agriculture
• Mining
• Financial institutions
• Other

Summary and recommendations for Scottish metric criteria

Business application table

Activities related to assessing current and future performance with respect to biodiversity, including third party verification are relevant to applications of a Scottish metric

Organisational focus area

Applications to different scales including project, site, region or national are relevant to a Scottish metric. Some sector-specific tools (e.g. developments of Agrecalc) would fall into supply chain. Corporate could be applied to a land holding as a business entity.

Maturity level

Relevant to a development of a Scottish metric.

Pressures table

The pressures relate to factors that may impact on biodiversity (rather than ES impacts of the business use of land/resources). These are not included in tools such as the Biodiversity Metric 3.0 at present, but could be important in determining the future outcomes of habitat restoration (e.g. vulnerability of restored peatland to future climate change). This could take the form of additional multipliers when scoring habitat recreation/restoration. Suggest discussion of revision/refinement and additional pressures relevant to Scottish users, e.g. disaggregating climate impacts such as changes to temperature, precipitation, disease risk.

Biodiversity ambitions

These are inherent in the policy drivers for the project but could include flexibility for changing objectives and targets. The current table is descriptive with tools mentioned where directly linked (e.g. Biodiversity Metric 3.0 and net gain).

Biodiversity scope

Useful in assessing tools against policy areas, and identifying potential adjustments to Biodiversity Metric 3.0.

Biodiversity metric

Current species-based metrics (number of individuals, globally threatened species) may not be appropriate across all applications. Does not include number or diversity of species. Species-based metric may impact on repeatability, e.g. resources and timing of repeated surveying. Habitat extent metrics are more widely used.

Level of efforts

Important element for assessing tools. Impact of effort requirements will vary across sectors/applications and scales. Flexibility will be important for a Scottish metric that can be scaled and widely applied.

Sector applicability

Currently includes agriculture, but could be expanded to include habitats/sectors relevant to Scotland, e.g. peatland restoration, woodland creation.