Biodiversity Footprints and Spend-Based Impact Factors – Linking UNEP-GLAM Ecosystem Quality Factors with the EE-MRIO Database EXIOBASE

Understanding how global production, trade, and consumption contribute to biodiversity loss requires metrics that can be applied consistently across sectors and global value chains. Environmentally extended multi-regional input–output (EE-MRIO) models offer a way to link economic activities to environmental pressures and impacts. This, however, requires a spend-based biodiversity impact factor dataset that can be mapped to the economic and environmental flows represented in the EE-MRIO database. Here, we present the development of such a dataset, created by linking the global EE-MRIO database EXIOBASE with UNEP’s Global Guidance for Life Cycle Impact Assessment Indicators and Methods (UNEP-GLAM) framework.

EXIOBASE is one of the most detailed EE-MRIO databases and is widely used to generate spend-based Scope 1/2/3 emission factors for greenhouse gas accounting. Besides GHG flows, EXIOBASE includes stressor for multiple environmental impacts, including water/land/nutrient use and material extraction. With version 3.10, these EXIOBASE stressors have been translated into ILCD flow names, which form the basis of the UNEP-GLAM biodiversity impact assessment framework. The new EXIOBASE-ILCD satellite account can thus be characterised using the GLAM biodiversity impact assessment method. We will present the challenges and lessons learned during the linking process, including differences in classification systems, data granularity, and methodological assumptions.

The EXIOBASE–UNEP-GLAM linkage now provides spend-based ecosystem quality impact factors (IO multipliers) for all EXIOBASE sectors, accounting for total biodiversity impacts along global supply chains. We will discuss how this new dataset - together with the already available spend-based emission factors for GHG, water use, material use, and other environmental stressors - enables a comprehensive assessment of environmental footprints for the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and other sustainability reporting frameworks. Using the dataset, we will also present country-level biodiversity footprints and trends, with a particular focus on the relationship between consumption levels and biodiversity impacts. Finally, we will discuss how the new ILCD-conform satellite account of EXIOBASE also facilitates integration with other biodiversity impact assessment frameworks, such as LC-IMPACT and the EU-PEF.