Natural Capital: Investing In A Nature Positive Future Is A Challenge for Data

Biodiversity is rapidly becoming a strategic priority for businesses and financial institutions. This goes further than surface-level ESG reporting, and is a strategic move towards a sustainable, green future. While carbon emissions have long been the focus, biodiversity represents a broader, more holistic approach towards environmental sustainability. Protecting and restoring biodiversity can also help address climate change through nature-based solutions.

However, measuring biodiversity impact introduces daunting data complexities. As the WWF notes, satellite and remote sensing data will be crucial over the next 3-5 years to unlock insights into biodiversity footprints.

Is it just about data?

Data signifies the very essence of future-proof sustainable business practices - a compelling narrative for companies looking to innovate, revolutionise industries and champion a greener, more sustainable future.?

But, it isn’t only insight from data, it is overcoming the barriers to adoption including trust, authenticity and traceability of the data to ensure solutions developed can provide the intended improvements to nature and biodiversity.

Measuring, recording, and reporting nature and biodiversity is going to be extremely challenging due to the variation regionally, nationally, and internationally (there is considerably more biodiversity in South East Asia than anywhere else). How do we consistently collect the data, set base lines, and compare results across climates, environments, and regions?

Will nature-based data remain open-source or will it move to a paid for model?

There will be barriers to accessing the data, there will be gaps to fill, and some datasets will be protected by organisations who want to own the IP.

There are companies who are collecting the data right now using satellites and ground-level analysis who are making it available through services and APIs. What many of these companies have decided not to do is to create consumer applications that takes the data and relays it in a meaningful way to people to report on alongside other ESG efforts.

Our challenge is to build applications and systems that take in this data from multiple sources, whether that is specifically related to Nature Based Solutions (NbS), carbon accounting, offsetting, alignment with the UN SDGs, or other planet and people-positive activities. This has to be delivered in a consistent way that is recognised by an ISO standard, and using a consistent format such as XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language), an open XML-based standard, for tagging report data to enable automated analysis and comparable benchmarking.

Specific Rules for Planning And Development In The UK

Biodiversity net gain (BNG) became mandatory from 12 February 2024. BNG is a way of creating and improving natural habitats by making sure it has a measurably positive impact (‘net gain’) on biodiversity, compared to what was there before development. It makes sure that habitats for wildlife are left in a measurably better state than they were before the development. Developers must deliver a BNG of 10%. This means a development will result in more or better quality natural habitat than there was before development.

To calculate the number of biodiversity units for existing habitat, or habitat enhancements to achieve BNG, an ecologist must use Defra’s calculator called the 'Statutory Biodiversity Metric Tool'. With this being rolled out across the whole of the UK there is going to be a shortage of ecologists is going to be a problem.

The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures

The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) has developed a set of disclosure recommendations and guidance that encourage and enable business and finance to assess, report and act on their nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities.

Their recommendations and guidance will enable businesses and finance to integrate nature into decision making. Their aim is to support a shift in global financial flows away from nature-negative outcomes and toward nature-positive outcomes, aligned with the Global Biodiversity Framework.

Am I Optimistic??

Yes. People connect emotionally with nature – enriching biodiversity can lead to more birds, butterflies and lush landscapes that are viscerally meaningful. And unlike carbon, early adopters will have a first-mover advantage in defining biodiversity platforms and models.

Can We Help?

The biodiversity data revolution demands cutting-edge digital capabilities. By leveraging our modern tech stack and multidisciplinary team, AndAnotherDay | Innovation Designed To Help? can deliver tangible digital solutions to make biodiversity a focal point on the path to ESG excellence and climate resilience.

Whether that’s creating cloud platforms to synthesise disparate biodiversity datasets, developing machine learning models to estimate restoration potential, creating intuitive dashboards for impact tracking aligned with emerging disclosure standards.