There is a growing awareness among businesses, financial institutions and policy-makers of the risks posed by the global decline of biodiversity, and opportunities for positive action.
In response to this, a complex landscape of metrics, tools and frameworks has been developed to measure and value the impacts and dependencies of business on biodiversity and associated ecosystem services, as part of wider natural capital assessment and accounting processes.
There is an urgent need to provide an agreed set of principles and technical criteria setting out ‘what’ elements of biodiversity should be measured and valued and ‘how’ this should be done in different decision-making contexts.
These recommendations from the Aligning accounting Approaches for nature (Align) project have been designed to address this need and support wider reporting, disclosure and target-setting initiatives and standards. These recommendations comprise a set of principles and technical criteria that define ‘what’ elements of biodiversity should be measured and ‘how’ this should be done in different business contexts.
Key recommendations include:
- The business context is important to determine appropriate measurement methods.
- The concept of ‘double materiality’ should be used to prioritise effort and attention.
- Indicators of ecosystem extent and condition should form the core of assessments of impact and
dependencies.
Download the Recommendations for a Standard on Corporate Biodiversity Measurement and Valuation in full here.
Two additional Guidance documents have been released as supplements to the main Align recommendations, provide fictional case studies, and point to available methods and tools for measuring impacts and dependencies at site level, and supply chain level respectively
Download the Measuring and Valuing Biodiversity at Site Level supplement here.
Download the Measuring and Valuing Biodiversity Across Supply Chains supplement here.
