Developing a species occurrence-based metric for measuring the biodiversity footprint of companies

As interest in biodiversity measures from the private sector grows, so will demand for metrics that can scale between large, global (e.g. whole of investment portfolio, entire sectors) scales and local, context specific scales (e.g. individual companies) while maintaining ecological realism. Currently available biodiversity footprint metrics are generally derived from top-down, global indices of biodiversity. However, these measures do not provide insight at a high spatial resolution and do not explicitly model individual species responses to pressures, leaving a gap in impact analyses that is crucial to fill if companies are to satisfy regulatory and reputational imperatives to demonstrably conserve local species and ecosystems.

Metrics derived from species distribution models for a wide range of taxa offer a potentially tractable and feasible approach for quantifying the footprint of a broad range of activities on biodiversity that can also be readily updated with new data from globally available databases and local-scale surveys. Here, we propose a new occurrence-based species footprint metric that can be applied across a broad range of species at global and local-scales and evaluation contexts (e.g. reporting and disclosure of biodiversity impacts, status and trends) while also providing a tractable approximation of species extinction risk. We demonstrate the utility of this metric with two Australian case studies, quantifying the species occurrence footprint of 1) an individual water utility company at a small spatial-scale, 2) an agricultural sector at a large spatial scale across Australia. We demonstrate how our species occurrence footprint metric allows businesses to estimate their total impact on nature as well as providing opportunities to pinpoint both locations and species where impacts or restoration opportunities might be higher or lowest.

To be fit-for-purpose, biodiversity footprinting measures for companies need to be built from the bottom-up and provide high spatial resolution, species-specific and ecologically sound estimates of impact and change. Robust biodiversity metrics that can achieve this will ultimately deliver positive outcomes for biodiversity by ensuring companies accurately account for and respond to their impacts on nature.