French data company CDC Biodiversite will this week launch a free version of its biodiversity footprinting tool Global Biodiversity Score (GBS) with limited features.
From Thursday, any organisation will be able to use GBS Open to measure their biodiversity footprint for non-commercial use, CDC Biodiversite said.
The “huge step” in the development of GBS aims to “contribute to far more visibility for our community of users, especially in the context of emerging standards frameworks”, said Patricia Zhang, development and methodology lead of the score at CDC Biodiversite.
Self-assessing companies and academic researchers will be able to use the tool via website GitHub, with the output usable in Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosure (TNFD) submissions, Zhang told Carbon Pulse.
Her company is the nature data-focused arm of French public financial institution Caisse des Depots et Consignations (CDC).
The free version will work alongside the existing paid-for GBS, which has emerged as one of the leading biodiversity footprinting tools over the last couple of years for companies and financial institutions. Among its 55 users are financiers Allianz, Amundi, and Mirova.
GBS Open will offer an older version of the GBS without technical support, with the data available under a different licence, Zhang said.
Features excluded from GBS Open include some impact factors, data corrections, and access to an upcoming web platform, she said.
“Significant differences between those two products will remain,” meaning GBS Open should not undermine the attraction of its predecessor, she said.
Nevertheless, free users will able to estimate their biodiversity footprint, in mean species abundance, throughout their value chains. The GBS splits impacts on land and freshwater into ‘dynamic’ – over a year – and ‘static’ – over time up until the last year.
One of the key challenges for users of GBS Open will be training, she said. “Documents will be available, but without training it may be harder for people to use GBS Open. It’s a complicated topic,” she said.
CDC Biodiversite is also preparing to integrate satellite data into the GBS, in a shift towards using actual information over modelled, an update it hopes to launch this year, Zhang said.
In addition, the company is working on improving the compatibility of GBS with reporting frameworks, in a further update that should happen in the next couple of years, she said.
GBS Open will launch officially during a webinar on April 11 at 3pm UK time.
By Thomas Cox – t.cox@carbon-pulse.com
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