Developing free monitoring tools is crucial as corporates’ interest in disclosing their biodiversity footprint is increasing, the director for biodiversity at the European Commission said Thursday.
Humberto Delgado Rosa spoke during an online webinar hosted by French data company CDC Biodiversite, which launched an open source version of its biodiversity monitoring tool Global Biodiversity Score (GBS).
“These kinds of tools are essential for the economy and the businesses for their own sake, not only on the risks but also opportunities,” Rosa said.
“Removing the financial barrier will foster interest and uptake, and open another door for those several businesses that are starting to embark on the biodiversity journey, enabling them to take into account their biodiversity footprint.”
On Thursday, the EU Business & Biodiversity (B&B) Platform presented for the first time its report on the key differences between the most prominent biodiversity disclosure initiatives, including those from Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) and Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD).
“Stakeholders are asking us to help them by providing an overview of existing approaches to disclose corporate biodiversity, and there’s the need for these measurement tools, like GBS, to be actually complimentary,” Rosa underlined.
“It’s actually very important for any accounting approach to be comprehensive and cover both biodiversity impacts and dependencies on ecosystem services. Otherwise, we will have an incomplete picture.”
Rosa emphasised that improving the measurement of risks and impacts on nature is crucial to achieving the 2030 biodiversity strategy in the context of the European Green Deal, adding that “having free tools will also invite academics and experts to suggest improvements to the tools themselves or to the use that can be given to the data towards a progress that is unavoidable”.
Engaging the scientific community is regarded as critical to bolstering the effectiveness and reliability of these emerging tools, as companies are facing growing expectations to align with target 15 of the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), which urged them to regularly monitor, assess, and disclose their risks, dependencies, and impacts.
However, according to a study released this week, the most commonly used tools to measure corporate impacts on biodiversity require urgent updates as they do not align well with the GBF.
By Giada Ferraglioni – giada@carbon-pulse.com
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