Infrastructure consultants AECOM have launched a metric for biodiversity assessment (BA) in Singapore to help calculate the impact on nature of site developments, and plan to expand the tool for the use of developers and civil servants across Southeast Asia.
Influenced by Natural England’s Biodiversity Metric, which is used to calculate biodiversity net gain, the Singapore BA Metric is designed to quantify the biodiversity value of habitat parcels found in Singapore.
“Calculating the number of biodiversity units at a site provides helps us to make informed decisions relating to urban planning or development. It can also be used to highlight the value of creating new habitats or enhancing and restoring habitats,” AECOM said in the BA handbook, released Wednesday.
“These informed decisions not only help us to protect what’s left of Singapore’s biodiversity but allow us to restore and rewild Singapore’s land so that we can all benefit from the ecosystem services that nature provides, whilst fighting the global climate and biodiversity emergencies.”
While the tool is primarily intended for various infrastructure and other physical projects, it could also be applied to market mechanisms, such as a basis for ecosystem service valuations or as a methodology in a biodiversity offset scheme.
Those who apply the free-to-use tool can assess the biodiversity value of a defined area, whether terrestrial, freshwater, or marine.
Losses or gains in biodiversity from human intervention can be calculated, both after the fact and as a prediction, which will let developers weigh biodiversity impacts when considering options for how to implement projects.
While the first version of the metric was developed specifically for use in Singapore, the company plans to expand its use case as nature and biodiversity start playing an increasingly important role in public policy and corporate planning, according to Ash Welch, a senior biodiversity expert with AECOM.
“The next step is to expand the tool for the use of all habitats across Southeast Asia, so that we can start to get companies looking at TNFD to use it as a metric to assess the value of sites in the region,” he told Carbon Pulse, referring to the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures.
The BA can be used to assess the value of land more broadly as well as for ESG purposes, which might suit TNFD reporting frameworks.
Southeast Asia is among the most biodiversity-rich regions in the world, but many of the countries there have suffered major losses of natural areas, including forests and wetlands.
Biodiversity assessment tools specifically designed for the flora and fauna found across Southeast Asia would give governments and companies the opportunity to slow and reverse that trend, while putting them on track to meet their Global Biodiversity Framework commitments.
Access to such tools might also help attract private finance for nature-based solutions, as recent research by Imperial College Business School estimated the nature restoration projects required across Southeast Asia would come at an annual cost of around $200 billion.
Welch estimated that once the required data had been acquired, it would take around a year to roll out AECOM’s tool across the region.
But while the Singapore BA Metric could be useful for regulatory schemes such as a biodiversity offsetting framework, he added it might not be ideal for use in the emerging global voluntary biodiversity credit market, where Southeast Asia is considered a likely major supplier of credits.
“I think it’s probably a bit too reductive to be used for credits. If it were to be used for credits it would need several other metrics layered into it, like connectivity, and potentially metrics focusing on key species,” Welch said.
By Stian Reklev – stian@carbon-pulse.com
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