Biodiversity footprints offer immense potential for companies to assess their direct and indirect biodiversity impacts, to identify high-risk areas in value chains, and to establish mitigation measures, ultimately resulting in an asset that can be increased or even be traded.
This session presents current developments in corporate biodiversity reporting and invites contributions on:
- biodiversity metrics or assessment tools for companies
- challenges and opportunities in developing and implementing biodiversity footprints
- links to frameworks such as ESG, ESRS E4, TFND, and SBTN
- case studies on corporate biodiversity footprint reporting
We plan to connect scientific knowledge and corporate perspectives, welcoming contributions from both biodiversity researchers and business professionals.
The accelerating biodiversity crisis has heightened the demand for robust and comparable tools to assess human impacts on nature and to guide effective biodiversity offset strategies. Achieving no net loss (NNL) or net positive impact (NPI) outcomes require metrics that can measure biodiversity changes across multiple ecological dimensions with scientific rigor and transparency. However, the proliferation of metrics in literature has created uncertainty about which are most appropriate for different contexts. To address this gap, we conducted an extensive literature review and critical analysis of biodiversity metrics developed worldwide for terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. We identified an initial set of 40 metrics, compiled from published reviews on biodiversity metrics, reports from international organizations, and a systematic review conducted specifically for this study. These metrics were evaluated according to five main criteria: (i) scientific robustness and methodological clarity; (ii) suitability for biodiversity offsetting, focusing on the quantification of losses and gains; (iii) local-scale applicability consistent with project development contexts; (iv) availability of documentation describing the formulation, required parameters and practical application; and (v) representativeness across different dimensions of biodiversity, including attributes (composition, structure, function, and risk) and organization levels (species/population, communities/ecosystems, and landscape). Based on this assessment, using a multi-criteria approach, we selected a subset of 14 metrics that together capture multiple dimensions of biodiversity. This “Biodiversity Metrics Toolbox” enables users to select a combination of metrics tailored to the ecological and operational context of their assessments. Rather than choosing a single metric, we indicate a metric combination to ensure complementarity among biodiversity attributes and organization levels. Built on a structured and transparent process, the toolbox provides a practical and scientifically grounded opportunity to select metrics that will improve consistency, transparency, and ecological relevance of biodiversity offset schemes. The adoption of this toolbox can enhance evidence-based decision-making and strengthen the integration of biodiversity into corporate and policy strategies.
How to cite: Resende, F., Dória, T., Manes, S., Liévano-Latorre, L., Borges-Matos, C., Fernandes, R., Martins, L. F., Vaz, S., Conrado-Silva, L., and Pavani, B.: A metrics toolbox for measuring gains and losses of biodiversity, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-190, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-190, 2026.
The demand for transparent corporate biodiversity reporting, particularly driven by standards like the EU’s ESRS E4, requires moving from qualitative risk assessments to quantifiable, location-specific, and dynamic metrics. The main challenges currently include the lack of standardization, the inherent complexity of biodiversity, and the difficulty of acquiring and processing data with sufficient spatio-temporal resolution across diverse operational footprints.
We propose to address this challenge from both ends. First, by providing tooling for the operationalization of indicators based on scientific research in backend services. Second, by an easy-to-use interface for companies that enables the acquisition of report-ready metrics for provided company properties. The operationalization requires connectors to access diverse remote sensing data sources, a processing pipeline that scales with the data volume, and a framework to incorporate machine learning (ML) models in the computation of biodiversity indicators. While the backend has to provide a rich set of operations, the frontend needs to be simple and focus on the access and exploration of indicators with respect to comprehensibility, applicability (e.g., validated for Western European vegetation), and reusability.
The Geo Engine is our geo-processing toolkit that offers native support for time-series, data connectors to crucial data hubs like the Copernicus Dataspace Ecosystem, a declarative query engine that provides standard operators and reusable processing graphs, and an ML operator that allows the incorporation of trained models into processing. As the Geo Engine is Open Source and the processing is declarative, the computation of indicators is fully auditable.
We introduce the Biodiversity Indicator Service BioIS that serves as a user-facing application, which allows discovering, auditing, and accessing a growing number of biodiversity indicators that are computed and served by Geo Engine. It allows the ad-hoc computation of metrics for uploaded company properties for a selected time period. For BioIS, we focus on indicators derived from remote sensing data, in particular satellite imagery from Sentinel-2. While the resolution is limited in comparison to commercial data, it suffices for large-scale monitoring of key biodiversity-relevant changes. We demonstrate our approach on two selected use cases: land usage and dominant tree species in Germany.
How to cite: Beilschmidt, C., Drönner, J., Mattig, M., and Seeger, B.: From Biodiversity Research to Report-ready Metrics: Biodiversity Indicators as Services based on Geo Engine, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-170, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-170, 2026.
The recent adoption of EU directives on nature has spurred the creation of numerous sustainability reporting databases and tools. However, a truly holistic approach to managing biodiversity data, calculating indices, and reporting impacts remains absent. Reporting on biodiversity and site-level impacts in a spatially explicit manner is particularly complex for businesses, raising concerns about the reporting burden while simultaneously highlighting the untapped potential of open remote sensing data.
Within the Horizon Europe project A-Track, we are developing a common data structure designed to facilitate and harmonise naturerelated information for businesses. Our work investigates the structuring of public nature data according to the principles of the System of Environmental Economic Accounts Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA), and its alignment with the E4 requirements on biodiversity and ecosystems from the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), as well as with State of Nature metrics from the Nature Positive Initiative (NPI). The overarching aim is to create businessrelevant metrics that can bridge scientific frameworks and corporate reporting needs.
We demonstrate the generation of such metrics through example cases in the mining and agricultural sectors, illustrating how extent and condition indicators can be derived for small private sites using public Earth Observation (EO) data. These examples also consider applications within product life cycle management, where biodiversity impacts are often overlooked. We delve into the methodological challenges of integrating heterogeneous datasets, ensuring spatial resolution is sufficient for site-level reporting, and creating a set of metrics that sufficiently reflects ecological processes while remaining practical and understandable for users.
Finally, we identify the key requirements for a common data structure that enables the effective use of public data in private sustainability reporting. We highlight current gaps where available public data cannot provide reliable estimates, and assess the opportunities this presents for developing innovative methods of valuing nature with open data. By advancing harmonised approaches, we contribute to reducing reporting burdens while enhancing the credibility and comparability of biodiversity metrics across sectors.
How to cite: Evans, A., Whitaker, D., Bedford, J., Braga, C., and Smets, B.: Nature Information Pathways for corporate sustainability reporting, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-377, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-377, 2026.
Institutions increasingly demand robust biodiversity impact metrics in order to comprehensively assess their environmental footprints. Two of the leading tools for supply chain impact analysis are Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and multi-regional input-output analysis (MRIO), which calculate a range of environmental impact indicators at each step in a product’s supply chain. Recent impact assessment model development, applied in LCA and MRIO, has produced a raft of new metrics for biodiversity loss, including mean species abundance (de Weert et al., 2025), functional diversity (Scherer et al., 2023), and improved species richness models (Verones et al., 2020), alongside additional early-stage metrics for ecosystem service impacts (GLAM, 2024). Implementing them in a way that provides meaningful outcomes for biodiversity, however, requires a nuanced understanding in what these metrics actually measure: for example, are these metrics different ways of calculating the same impacts, or are there fundamental differences in the information they communicate? Can we directly cross-compare different biodiversity metrics, or better yet, combine them into a single metric? And how well do they communicate impacts at different geographical scales? Economic valuation methods provide an additional layer of complexity to model results: can dollar values accurately convey ecological information? If so, are these methods robust enough for practitioners yet? Some attempts have been made to reconcile this wide range of impact assessment methods (Kuipers et al., 2025; Damiani et al., 2023), but model development is fast outpacing comprehensive discussions around these metrics. Here, we aim to answer some of these questions using a case study at both local and global scales. We focus specifically on global cotton supply chains, due to their high production-level impacts and globalized manufacturing processes (Zhang et al., 2023). In doing so, we demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of each indicator, how their results can be interpreted, and identify best practices for future practitioners.
How to cite: Wilson, E., Marques, A., Scherer, L., and Verones, F.: State-of-the-Art Impact Indicators for Supply Chain Management: Interpretation and Best Practices, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-228, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-228, 2026.
Biodiversity underpins the global economy and human well-being, providing vital ecosystem services (such as pollination, water purification, and climate regulation) upon which over half of global GDP depends. Yet accelerating biodiversity loss, largely driven by human activities, poses increasing risks to economic stability, business resilience, and financial systems. Recognising both their role in the problem and their potential as part of the solution, companies face growing pressure to understand, mitigate, and disclose their impacts and dependencies on biodiversity. The Global Biodiversity Framework calls for urgent action to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, with Target 15 requiring businesses and financial institutions to assess, disclose, and reduce their nature-related risks and impacts. In Europe, regulations (such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and others) are driving demand for reliable, spatially explicit biodiversity data that can inform business decisions and accountability.
This Biodiversa+ report provides guidance on how the private sector can better use public biodiversity and nature-related data to inform decision-making, disclosure, and strategy. Using a mixed-method approach, the study combined desk research with semi-directive interviews involving over twenty companies from high-impact sectors (energy, materials, consumer staples, and finance) and numerous international biodiversity and nature-related initiatives and organisations. The interviews explored how companies currently work with biodiversity data, the challenges they face, and the emerging solutions shaping their corporate actions.
The findings show that while biodiversity data is plentiful, it remains underused due to fragmentation across platforms, uneven quality and comparability, limited ecological literacy, and uncertainty about how to integrate data into business processes. Nevertheless, many firms are innovating through collaboration, internal capacity-building, and partnerships with data intermediaries.
Key takeaways highlight that (1) businesses must start using available data now rather than waiting for perfection; (2) collaboration across public and private actors is essential; (3) long-term investment in data quality and accessibility is needed; and (4) social and cultural factors within organisations are as important as technical improvements in achieving biodiversity-positive action.
How to cite: Teske, D. and Bakker, E.: Accelerating private sector use of public biodiversity- and nature-related data to measure, report, and act on biodiversity. , World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-257, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-257, 2026.
As a global leader in technology and innovation, Siemens recognizes both the critical challenges of biodiversity loss and the immense opportunities in proactive environmental stewardship. We firmly acknowledge biodiversity and nature as foundational to a thriving planet, resilient societies, and sustainable economies, making it a material topic within our CSRD reporting. Biodiversity protection is more than just an environmental challenge. It is driven by the passion our employees exhibit for protecting and enhancing nature directly within their work environments.
Driven by this commitment, in 2021, Siemens undertook an initial landmark science-based biodiversity footprint assessment. Conducted in collaboration with the UK-based The Biodiversity Consultancy, this evaluation provided critical initial insights into biodiversity-related risks, dependencies, and opportunities for impact mitigation activities.
The assessment and the transparency we acquired on our biodiversity footprint have been an important step toward developing our biodiversity conservation program. It enabled us to identify major biodiversity impacts, foster internal awareness, and create a basis for developing targeted mitigation measures.
In 2025, Siemens successfully published a corporate Biodiversity Ambition, anchored in our global DEGREE (Decarbonization, Ethics, Governance, Resource efficiency, Equity and Employability) sustainability framework. We are aiming to drive biodiversity protection by implementing a conservation program at 100% of our environmentally relevant sites by 2030. In addition, we strive to reduce our biodiversity footprint by designing for circularity, optimizing resource use, minimizing waste and conserving water resources.
Our venture confirms that Biodiversity Footprint Assessments are invaluable for understanding corporate impacts and prioritizing conservation actions. However, we've also encountered challenges, particularly in data collection and navigating the inherent complexity of biodiversity metrics. We believe that effective communication and the translation of scientific insights into actionable business language are paramount for successfully deriving and implementing targets and mitigation measures to improve a company’s biodiversity footprint. I am eager to share Siemens’ journey and lessons learned with the session’s audience.
How to cite: Heimgartner, C.: Biodiversity Footprint Assessment – Strategic Impact, challenges and opportunities from a corporate perspective , World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-273, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-273, 2026.
Land-use change is a leading driver of climate change and biodiversity loss. In this context, Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) is emerging as a tool for assessing impacts on- and dependencies from- nature at various levels, including businesses in their direct operations and along value chains. NCA can thus contribute to discussions of sustainability on how investments contribute to public and private value creation. While such analyses have been undertaken in resource extraction industries such as mining and forestry, real estate applications are scarce, and prospective modelling is increasingly required in order to inform future land use decisions that will reverse biodiversity loss alignment with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. In this study, we applied NCA methods to three land-use scenarios for a 1,300-hectare corporate estate in Mauritius, a Small Island Developing State (SIDS) which has consistently attracted between half and two-thirds of its foreign direct investment in the real estate sector over the recent years. Notably, a financially maximising urban scenario developed over 25 years (2025-2049) would marginally improve the watershed ecosystem condition (calculated as per the UN System of Environmental Economic Accounting, Ecosystem Accounting - SEEA-EA), but halve societal value via ecosystem services compared to a do-nothing scenario. Business value, on the other hand, would be increased 37-fold. In contrast, a low-density agro-residential development scenario would grow business value 20-fold and societal value 3-fold. The findings highlight the importance of assessments in both biophysical and monetary terms, since the disclosure of impacts on ecosystem condition alone may mislead stakeholders on the societal value of corporate projects. Consequently, the study underscores the methodology’s potential to complement existing environmental assessment tools and inform land use planning at both national and subnational levels, with promising implications for enlightening discussions around value creation for the public or common good from the perspective of sustainable land utilisation.
How to cite: Koenig, X., Deenapanray, P., and Nicolas, M.: Improved ecosystem condition but reduced services? Modelling corporate land use effects on a watershed in Mauritius. , World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-38, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-38, 2026.
Human activities are profoundly reshaping the planet, driving accelerating biodiversity loss and widespread habitat degradation. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) call for halting human-induced extinctions and safeguarding critical ecosystems by 2030. Yet economic growth and associated pressures, including land-use change, resource extraction, climate change, pollution, and invasive species, continue to erode biodiversity, especially in global hotspots. Achieving the Kunming-Montreal goals requires not only global commitment but also robust, spatially explicit assessments that allow public and private sectors to understand, mitigate, and manage their biodiversity impacts.
In response, regulatory frameworks such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) now require companies to assess their biodiversity impacts and dependencies. However, existing tools, including IBAT, WWF’s Biodiversity Risk Filter, ENCORE, and AI-driven platforms, capture only partial aspects of biodiversity. Many rely on coarse spatial units, static datasets, sector-level averages, or black-box algorithms. Importantly, none combines site-specific biodiversity state, direct pressure assessment, and temporal monitoring needed for informed, location-based mitigation and nature-positive planning.
THRIVE (Toolset for Hierarchical Reporting and Insightful Validation of Ecosystems) was developed by Naturalis Biodiversity Center in collaboration with KPMG to fill this gap. THRIVE is a spatially explicit, site-level biodiversity monitoring tool that integrates globally recognised datasets (e.g., Biomes, WWF ecoregions, WDPA, Key Biodiversity Areas, Red List, GBIF) with regional and national biodiversity data. It merges dynamic land-use change, fragmentation, encroachment, wetland conversion, species occurrence, and habitat condition into a hierarchical set of indicators, revealing biodiversity state and pressures at each location. Unlike many existing tools, THRIVE uses transparent, externally verifiable data aligned with TNFD LEAP and CSRD reporting, ensuring auditability and actionable, site-specific decision-making rather than coarse risk scanning.
By linking corporate activities directly to observed biodiversity conditions, THRIVE enables companies to identify high-impact or high-risk sites, prioritise mitigation and restoration actions, and contribute to global biodiversity targets. While not yet designed for portfolio-level aggregation, THRIVE provides a scientifically rigorous, decision-ready foundation for nature-positive corporate strategies, ensuring biodiversity assessments are aligned, credible, spatially explicit, and fit for the 2030 and 2050 ambitions.
How to cite: Pan, K., Raes, N., Teske, D., Feijoo Quezada, A., de Luca, M., Le Lann, W., Bloemsma, I., Heijke, V., and Biesmeijer, K.: THRIVE: mapping biodiversity impacts and dependencies for corporate nature-positive decisions, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-611, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-611, 2026.
Within the scope of environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting, large companies are increasingly required to report on their impacts on biodiversity. Under the European Corporate Sustainable Reporting Directive (CSRD), companies must follow the European Sustainability Reporting Standard E4, which specifies the reporting requirements for biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, due to the complex and multifaceted nature of biodiversity, mapping biodiversity and measuring impacts of large companies on biodiversity remains challenging. Despite advances in remote sensing, life cycle assessment and environmental impact assessment, there is still no broadly accepted and scalable framework for measuring biodiversity impacts. Therefore, a common standard such as the CO2-footprint for assessing climate change impacts remains elusive. To address this gap, we are developing a framework for assessing the biodiversity footprint of large companies. Our approach combines state-of-the-art remote sensing, artificial intelligence and local biodiversity assessment and is composed of two strongly interlinked modules. In the biodiversity module, field monitoring data and existing biodiversity indices will be combined into an indicator set, which will be used to develop an ecosystem-specific multimetric index. Simultaneously, the remote sensing and AI module will process satellite data and derived remote sensing products to produce a multi-source layer stack that will be fed into a machine-learning model. Both modules will be the foundation for a biodiversity footprint model, which will be trained to predict biodiversity patterns from remote sensing data alone. Ultimately, this model will provide biodiversity mapping on a global scale with high temporal and spatial resolution – without the requirement of field data collection. The biodiversity footprint of a company can then be quantified based on its impacted areas. With this framework, we want to contribute to enabling large companies from all sectors to assess their impact on biodiversity, to monitor the effectiveness of mitigation measures, and to support compliance with biodiversity reporting requirements.
How to cite: Bürck, S., Gebert, F., Leist, L., Marini, F. M., Bendix, J., and Haase, P.: Developing a framework for biodiversity footprinting of large companies, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-472, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-472, 2026.
Landseed's mission is to dramatically increase capital investment in biodiversity by transforming conservation from philanthropy to investment. Through partnerships with major U.S. land trusts and environmental investors, we are building a marketplace that creates tradable nature equity tied to verified ecological protection.
Tying financial value directly to conservation assets: We tokenize the legal instruments that protect nature—conservation easements and similar protections—creating equity in the asset value of biodiversity and habitats rather than offset credits. This grounds investment in tangible protection rather than projected ecological services. Pricing reflects actual conservation transactions. Our work with conservation groups and investors reveals what builds confidence and what barriers remain.
Where biodiversity metrics meet mainstream investment: Our "Proof of Protection" approach balances ecological understanding with financial valuation. We establish verification layers—geospatial data, legal protections, stewardship accountability, and ecological outcomes—that enable comparison across disparate regions and ecosystems. This requires compromises between scientific depth and market breadth. We are navigating the productive tension between what constitutes "quality" for ecological purposes versus financial purposes, learning from rapid progress in measurement technologies while building investor confidence.
Practical lessons from building nature-based financial assets: Working directly with conservation practitioners and investors exposes critical adoption barriers: trust deficits in nature markets, regulatory uncertainty, technical accessibility for non-crypto-native users, and the fundamental challenge of valuing non-monetized ecosystem services. We are developing approaches to regulatory compliance while making conservation data publicly accessible.
Integrating indigenous and local stakeholders: We believe those closest to the land must have stake in the investment, governance, and financial benefits—not simply serve as knowledge sources. We are designing our platform to accommodate diverse governance structures, ensure meaningful participation in decision-making, and enable equitable distribution of financial returns to landowners, indigenous peoples, local communities, and conservation stewards.
We share what we're learning in real-time—including what's working, what's failing, and unresolved challenges—to advance the group’s discussion on how we can all mobilize private finance to bridge the $700 billion biodiversity funding gap.
How to cite: Woods, S., Curtis, G., and Roessner, A.: Tokenizing Conservation to Build Biodiversity Investment Markets: Real-World Lessons, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-559, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-559, 2026.
Under the Global Biodiversity Framework’s Target 15, large and transnational companies are required to report nature-related financial risks—driving investors and firms to adopt new biodiversity impact assessment tools. Similar pressures stem from Article 29 of France’s Energy and Climate Law, the European Sustainability Reporting Standard ESRS E4, the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), and the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN). Yet despite this regulatory momentum, no standardised method exists for calculating corporate biodiversity footprints. Current tools differ substantially in how they characterise company activities, model environmental pressures, and translate these pressures into ecological impacts. As a result, businesses and financial institutions face significant uncertainty when trying to obtain reliable, decision-ready biodiversity metrics.
This paper offers the most extensive quantitative comparison to date of major investor-focused biodiversity impact assessment tools, supported by a systematic review of their methodological underpinnings. Drawing on a comparative analysis of eight tools applied to 500 large publicly listed U.S. companies, we show that company-level biodiversity impact rankings exhibit only low to moderate correlation. Consequently, investors relying on any single tool could reach materially different conclusions about corporate biodiversity impacts, potentially resulting in markedly different portfolio allocations when biodiversity is considered in investment decisions. We suggest that these divergences stem from differences in value-chain boundaries, environmental pressure modelling (e.g., land use, water use, greenhouse gas emissions), and the impact characterisation methods employed to translate these pressures into ecological outcomes such as LC-Impact, ReCiPe, GLOBIO, or bespoke alternatives. However, we also highlight significant uncertainty regarding the specific drivers of these divergent assessments, owing to opaque, inconsistently documented, or—in some cases—entirely absent methodological detail. Notably, even tools built on similar datasets or conceptual frameworks frequently produce divergent biodiversity footprint estimates, underscoring both the epistemic fragility and the limited decision-readiness of current approaches.
We discuss key challenges and opportunities for improving corporate biodiversity footprinting, including the need for greater transparency in modelling assumptions, integration of spatially explicit operational and ecological data, and clearer communication of uncertainty.
How to cite: Hickman, S., Cantele, M., Balogh, A., Dyndo, M., Willetts, J., Morgain, R., Geary, W., and Wintle, B.: Making money talk nicely: Biodiversity impact assessment for investors , World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-235, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-235, 2026.
Transformative changes in our production and consumption habits are needed to halt biodiversity loss. Organizations are the way we humans have organized our everyday life, and much of our negative environmental impacts, also called carbon and biodiversity footprints, are caused by organizations. We explore how the accounts of any organization can be exploited to develop an integrated carbon and biodiversity footprint account. As a metric we utilize spatially explicit potential global loss of species across all ecosystem types and argue that it can be understood as the biodiversity equivalent. Biodiversity equivalent is able to capture the fundamental understanding that the same human pressure in different regions of the world has a different potential to harm as well as conserve global biodiversity. The utility of the biodiversity equivalent for biodiversity could be like what carbon dioxide equivalent is for climate: it provides a common currency for measuring biodiversity loss across the planet. We present a global country specific dataset, BIOVALENT, that organizations, experts and researchers can use to assess consumption-based biodiversity footprints.
To highlight the utility of the method, we draw upon multiple case studies and present the biodiversity footprints of S Group (multi-sector retail corporation), city of Tampere and Finnish citizens. However, we also argue that the assessment of biodiversity footprints is not sufficient to drive transformative change. We provide a framework for a more robust financial value-transforming accounting model. To test how biodiversity footprinting could transform financial values, we explore how the biodiversity equivalent could be used for offsetting the global value chain biodiversity footprints. Here we use a Finnish university as a living lab. Assigning an offsetting cost to the biodiversity footprint significantly altered the financial value of the organization. We believe such value-transforming accounting is needed to draw the attention of senior executives and investors to the negative environmental impacts of their organizations.
How to cite: El Geneidy, S., Peura, M., Aumanen, V.-M., Baumeister, S., Helimo, U., Vainio, V., and Kotiaho, J.: Value-transforming financial, carbon and biodiversity footprint accounting, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-302, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-302, 2026.
Quantifiable data on organizations’ biodiversity impacts is essential for developing business models that support a nature-positive future. The financial sector, as an economic intermediary, holds significant potential to drive this transformation. By influencing capital allocation, actors such as asset managers and institutional investors can steer businesses toward reducing biodiversity loss. In recent years, the financial sector has developed and piloted various tools to assess biodiversity impacts and dependencies. However, these methods differ in accuracy, comparability, and scope, and no standardized approach has emerged. Moreover, it remains unclear if and how biodiversity impact assessment results translate into management and strategic decision-making, such as investment choices. Addressing this gap is critical for ensuring that conducting such assessments lead to meaningful change.
This study applies the Biodiversity Equivalent Impact Assessment (BIOVALENT) method to the investment portfolio of an institutional investor—the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. The analysis focused on company stocks and other equity-based instruments. Beyond quantifying the portfolio’s biodiversity footprint, the project aimed to evaluate the suitability of the BIOVALENT method to the context of finance, and how it can be operationalized and further developed for financial decision-making. Our assessment successfully identified holdings with the greatest biodiversity impact, demonstrating the method’s potential for guiding portfolio construction and adjustments. Hence, the assessment can guide the designing of pathways towards reducing the biodiversity footprints. These findings suggest that biodiversity impact assessment can inform strategies for aligning investments with nature-positive objectives.
Building on these results, the next phase of the research will develop a conceptual model illustrating how biodiversity metrics can be integrated into financial strategy and management decisions. This model will address the practical challenge of translating biodiversity data into actionable investment policies, contributing to the broader goal of embedding biodiversity considerations into financial governance. By advancing both methodological and conceptual frameworks, this research supports the financial sector’s role in driving systemic change toward halting and reversing biodiversity loss.
How to cite: Hokkanen, A.: Harnessing biodiversity impact assessment for strategic management of finance, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-454, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-454, 2026.
The evaluation of a company's impact on biodiversity is gaining importance for accounting, reporting, and asset management, underscoring the need for a standardized, global measurement framework. Methods and technology of satellite remote sensing have progressed from being tools for rather coarse spatial analyses to enabling fine grained environmental assessment. From this perspective, scientific and commercial satellite remote sensing missions offer a consistent, standardized and reliable source of data with considerable, yet largely untapped potential in the sustainability and compliance sector.
Recent advances in remote sensing allow for increasingly detailed characterizations of habitats, their heterogeneity, and fragmentation. Thereby, remote sensing complements field surveys by extrapolating from point-based information to larger spatial extents. Future opportunities lie in the cohesive fusion of multi-sensor data, which could help move analyses beyond incomparable single site analyses towards globally comparable surveys. Emerging methodologies now facilitate the mapping of functional diversity across landscapes. Spectral species concepts offer scalable pathways for estimating e.g. multi-taxa alpha and beta diversity with a standardized set of predictors. In parallel, the integration of high-frequency time series enables the monitoring of disturbance regimes and ecosystem integrity with high temporal granularity, providing more comprehensive insights into ecological processes. By translating complex data into comparable, verifiable indicators, remote sensing forms the technical backbone of frameworks like ESRS E4.
We assess the current state of satellite remote sensing for biodiversity mapping from an ecological perspective and contextualize these capabilities within CSRD reporting and conservation. Focusing on platforms with high revisit frequencies and global coverage, we outline how satellite data can support companies in tracking and reporting on biodiversity while addressing demanding policy requirements, complex supply chains, varying environmental conditions, and site access challenges. In doing so, we conceptualize an approach to operationalize satellite remote sensing for biodiversity reporting and conservation globally. We show that remote sensing methods combined with advanced machine learning can increase efficiency and transparency while reducing costs for compliance activities.
How to cite: Marini, F. M., Leist, L., Bürck, S., Gebert, F., Haase, P., and Bendix, J.: Operationalizing Earth Observation for Standardized Global Biodiversity Reporting, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-628, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-628, 2026.
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.
How to cite: Geary, W., Bal, P., Wilkinson, D., Rodriguez, D. A., Wright, D., Bekessy, S., and Wintle, B.: Developing a species occurrence-based metric for measuring the biodiversity footprint of companies, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-629, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-629, 2026.
Our grand challenge: to arrive at a common framework for defining "nature" and measuring the extent to which nature either improves or declines over time. We don't have the luxury of a single, interoperable molecule like CO2, which those in the carbon footrprinting space enjoy. To date over 600 nature metrics have been identified, presenting corporates with a daunting task. They must quickly develop internal accounting metrics for their nature impacts (and uplift) that are replicable and easy to implement across numerous stakeholders within their business value chain.
Of the three categories of metrics -- ecosystems, species, and genes – ecosystems (extent and condition) are the most actionable. But corporates are now asking: What are the observable characteristics of an ecosystem that can be reliably monitored over time across diverse geographies? To answer this question, we have to tackle a more difficult question: how are we defining "ecosystem"?
While there is an effort underway to develop a common global taxonomy of ecosystems (estimated to be approximately 5000 units), this is likely many years away. Ecoregions could save the day for corporates, especially during the critical time frame of 2026-2030, offering us something of a "shorthand" for defining the ecological context of a particular site focusing particularly on vegetative cover.
In this talk, we'll be unveiling Ecoregions 2026, the product of a year of review by leading conservation biologists and biogeographers, which provides for the first time a globally uniform set of "context windows" that define the observable characteristics of a particular geography against which baselines of ecosystem extent and condition can be measured. This can help to solve numerous problems facing corporates in their footprinting efforts:
*Current open-source land cover maps and products like Nature Lands Map often overestimate the extent of natural land in many regions, and novel AI products have proven unreliable.
*Some ecoregions have much higher risk factors than others. There are 500 unique forest ecoregions that can be differentiated, providing key insights on both risks and benefits of nature-positive investments.
*KBAs can be enhanced using ecoregions by screening out anthropogenic lands currently designated as critical for biodiversity.
How to cite: Burkart, K., Dinerstein, E., and Stern, R.: Ecoregional context windows: a game-changer nature footrpinting, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-925, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-925, 2026.
