The Science Based Targets Network (SBTN) this month released updated technical guidance and a corporate manual to help companies tackle their nature impacts, at a time of intensifying debate over perceived trade-offs between rigour and feasibility in target-setting.
The controversy has centred on SBTN’s carbon counterpart, the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which saw a change in leadership this summer following outcry about the use of offsets to help meet Scope 3 emissions targets.
SBTN’s technical guidance and corporate manual aims to make methodologies more doable in response to feedback – but without compromising target rigour and ambition, executive director Erin Billman told Carbon Pulse.
The guidance was updated after a consultative process to understand what pain points for companies and consultants, during a pilot with 17 firms that tested draft methods for setting targets on ecosystem protection and restoration, freshwater use, and freshwater pollution.
“There’s a distinction between feasibility of the methods, and feasibility of setting, meeting, and achieving a target. The feasibility of [meeting targets] is incumbent upon the company to figure out,” Billman said.
The carbon offset controversy at SBTi had detrimental consequences for the nascent voluntary biodiversity credit markets, a legal expert said in May.
FINDINGS & REVISIONS
Aside from boosting feasibility, revisions to the SBTN technical guidance aimed to improve clarity, strengthen validation requirements, and raise ambition, according to the pilot insights summary document released July 10.
The changes followed five lessons learned during the pilot, SBTN said:
- Companies have a generally favourable view of standardised procedures over ‘flexible’ ones
- Undertaking critical value chain assessments requires extensive resources
- Further guidance is needed on data selection and use to describe biodiversity hazards
- Tracing impacts to the source can be especially challenging
- Companies sometimes find the locations of operation that SBTN procedures identify as key for target-setting to be unexpected or counterintuitive.
July’s announcement is SBTN’s major content release of the year, Billman said, but the programme will issue further communications in September regarding further pilot outcomes and any validated targets.
DATA QUALITY CONTROL
With 17 firms in the pilot, most of which have far-reaching international supply chains, data availability and granularity have complicated reporting, Billman said.
“When you’re talking about setting a freshwater target, it matters where you are in terms of what the reality is in that basin. Our methods are designed to set basin-specific targets,” she explained, referring to the key geographic unit for freshwater networks.
“There are many basins that don’t have either local e-flow models, and/or local stakeholders that are ready to use local models, and the engagement of local stakeholders is best practice in terms of the process to set the target.”
E-flow models depict the minimum flow that must be maintained in a stream to help ecosystems thrive, provided that they also exist under appropriate hydrological and environmental conditions.
In response to data challenges, SBTN has created reporting pathways that differentiate according to the quality of data and modelling available – and there is a dedicated process companies must undertake to ‘level up’ to a more rigorous track, Billman said.
“There’s still a need to check if there’s a local freshwater model and [to engage] local stakeholders, but not to have those hold up companies’ ability to keep moving and setting targets if they hit roadblocks on those.”
Also, companies must declare, publicly and to validators, whether they are using global or local models to inform their targets. This factor is considered in validation, Billman added.
However, unlike some reporting guidelines, like those of the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF) for greenhouse gas emissions, SBTN does not assign specific data quality scores to company reporting.
CLAIMS & TARGETS
Also unlike peers in the carbon space, like the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI) for claims-making, SBTN does not anticipate providing quality seals, stamps, or labels to describe target achievement, Billman said.
Rather, targets and claims will be described in specific, measurable, actionable, and time-bound terms, she noted.
For example, company A could pledge to reduce its freshwater use in X basin by Y amount by Z year.
“[We] fill in the blanks with them,” Billman said, with SBTN providing guidance on timeframes and absolute reductions in nature impact.
Depending on the biome in question, targets are either separate, or grouped and mutually reinforcing, she added. For example, the land targets are a portfolio of three elements meant to work together.
These are: stopping converted natural ecosystems, absolute footprint intensity reduction, and engaging in landscape restoration and regeneration initiatives.
The protocols and design of the land targets are still evolving, Billman noted. The engagement target in particular is not currently measurable, but SBTN expects to make it so in future versions.
By Alejandra Padin-Dujon – alejandra@carbon-pulse.com
