Three ‘What ifs?’ around biodiversity, natural capital and technology.

Two significant things happened last week that stimulated three ‘What ifs’ for me. First, the UNEP’s Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) published the first-ever report on the ‘State of the World’s Migratory Species’. This is mostly a stocktake paper but it does elaborate on the key actions for conservation. The report has been distilled to 9 key data-points that matter to us all (and I’m paraphrasing the UNEP’s own summary):

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1.???? While some migratory species listed are improving, 44% are showing population decline

2.???? 22% of CMS-listed species are threatened with extinction

3.???? 97% CMS-listed fish are threatened with extinction

4.???? Extinction risk is growing for migratory species globally including those not listed under CMS

5.???? 51% of areas important for CMS-listed migratory animals do not have protected status

6.???? The greatest threats are overexploitation and habitat loss due to human activity

7.???? 75% CMS-listed species are impacted by habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation

8.???? 70% CMS-listed species are impacted by overexploitation

9.???? Climate change, pollution and invasive species are also having profound impacts

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Sobering huh?

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The second event was that my own country, the UK (by the way, a country which was itself referred to as ‘one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth’ in a key report, a collaboration between academics, NGOs and government agencies, last year) initiated its ‘Biodiversity Net Gain’ policy. Through the legislation, ‘all major housing developments are required to deliver at least a 10% benefit [my emphasis] for nature with England becoming the first country in the world to make Biodiversity Net Gain a legal requirement’ towards our ‘government’s commitment to halt species decline by 2030’. Developers are required to avoid damage to nature but, where that is unavoidable, to create new or improve habitats elsewhere.

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So, what were the ‘What ifs’?

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First, what if we allow the continued degradation of our natural capital to progress and accelerate unchecked?

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Well, here are four answers. If we have less of them, the sequestration capacity of plants and trees declines accelerating Climate Change. If bacteria that break down organic matter reduce, soil quality will degrade affecting crop yields. And if pollinators fail, the plants on which we depend for food, fibres, fuel and other applications will in turn decline. And we understand the business case pretty well too. We know $44tn of our GDP is moderately to highly dependent on nature. So, if we don’t act, around half the world’s GDP is at risk. But, as ever, there’s a tremendous business opportunity for leadership here. The World Economic Forum’s assessment is that protecting and improving habitats and biodiversity could unlock business value of $10tn pa and create 400m jobs by 2030.

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Second, what if we unlocked technological solutions and particularly artificial intelligence to better understand these systems, forecast our impact and determine cost-effective and rapidly scalable responses?

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Thankfully enterprise technology partners like 高知特 Cognizant , with their consulting, data, digital, systems integration, delivery capabilities and partnerships are extremely well placed to help leaders navigate this landscape.

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First, we need to establish monitoring where there are gaps and integrate data streams better where they do exist so data can flow better between them and achieve better critical-mass and currency. And, the sensor, satellite and drone technologies needed to build this picture exists. Miniaturization and nano-tech even allows us to attach sensors to the tiniest of creatures to understand how their colonies and habitats are behaving and changing.

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But all that data is irrelevant if it can’t deliver actionable-insight. So, second - and vitally - we need to gather it and couple it to advanced analytics and AI to explore it effectively. And let’s not underestimate the vast amount, variety and complexity of this data. Without those critical tools, we’ll never make sense of it in the limited window we have. But through them we can build the models our businesses, scientists and policy makers need to accurately determine what’s going on, what will change and how we can interrupt, prevent and reverse degradation.

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Finally, once the interventions have been established, we can use the same technologies to ensure they’re being enforced, to identify their impact and of course to determine whether course-correction’s are needed.

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Technology is not a panacea; we need to think more systemically and act more collaboratively. But we believe data and digital technologies can help us scale and accelerate our responses to environmental challenges and opportunities which is why we’re helping clients embed tech-enabled sustainability practices across their enterprises to benefit all their stakeholders.

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Finally, what if we could do so while also limiting or even neutralising the data centre impact to energy loads?

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Last week the FT reported that ‘Ireland, Germany, Singapore and China as well as a US county and Amsterdam in the Netherlands have introduced restrictions on new data centres in recent years to comply with more stringent environmental requirements’. There’s a knotty dilemma here; to leverage technology and particularly AI for these critically urgent use-cases, we will need to use a great deal more compute power and so energy. Data centre providers and users must understand the efficiency and energy consumption of their facilities and the applications running in them. They must devise robust forecasts of growth in demand. They must improve that efficiency and of course wherever possible they must use renewably generated energy (including generating their own where possible). All of these are perfectly possible and we and others are doing them with clients right now. Just ask our super colleagues Vernon Turner and Ivo van der Zanden .

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