en
Although a founding concept of the natural sciences, Biodiversity has always been the poor relation of environmental struggles and has only recently found its place on the political map. It is therefore interesting to focus on it through ecosystem services in order to highlight the challenges it faces.
Ecosystem services, defined as the tangible and intangible benefits we receive from biodiversity, play a critical role in our well-being and survival. We can distinguish four main categories that are involved in all our interactions with nature:
Unfortunately, while ecosystems continue to influence our lives, we are degrading them at an ever-increasing rate, through the artificialization of soils, the infiltration of wastewater... To meet these challenges, conservation and sustainable management strategies are needed. This involves assessing our impact and implementing individual and public practices to protect biodiversity.
The first step is therefore to measure our impact, but this is complex due to the many ways in which humans interact with their ecosystems. France is leading the way with the Global Biodiversity Score, developed by CDC Biodiversité and OFB, which makes it possible to quantify the impact of our economic activity on nature. The GBS uses an innovative unit of measurement, the "MSA per km²" (Mean Species Abundance), to quantify the area affected by an economic activity.
Specifically, an MSA.m² represents the conversion of one square meter of undisturbed natural area (e.g. primary forest) into a completely artificial area (e.g. a tarmac car park). The GBS therefore provides you with the fictitious natural area that your company artificializes. To achieve this, the GBS transforms consumption, emissions, and land rights data from a meta-database of scientific data into MSA.m².
Greenscope uses another MSA standard in its Corporate Biodiversity Footprint (CBF) calculation tool. It models the impact of companies on biodiversity through four key environmental pressures: land-use change, climate change (greenhouse gases), air pollution and water pollution. The advantage of this tool is its operational and realistic approach, which allows for more concrete action plans.
While the GBS and CBF assess the company's impact on biodiversity, others focus on the company's ability to adapt to ecological change. This is the case of the Encore (Exploring Natural Capital Opportunities, Risks and Exposure) tool, developed by the Natural Capital Finance Alliance in collaboration with UNEP-WCMC, an United Nations Environment Programme.
It lists 21 ecosystem services on which companies depend to carry out their activities and allows us to calculate our dependence on each of these services. This qualitative analysis of our dependence on ecosystem services allows us to estimate the exposure of our portfolio or business to the disruption and scarcity of one or more ecosystem services.
The growing recognition of these valuation standards is good news for biodiversity governance, which has long suffered from a lack of media coverage. Indeed, despite the urgency of the issue - of the 8 million plant and animal species identified, 1 million are threatened with extinction - the biodiversity COP makes few headlines compared to the climate COP.
However, the last one - Montreal in 2022 - gave shape to the Kunming-Montreal Agreement, which sets a global target of protecting 30% of the planet, restoring 30% of ecosystems, halving the risks from pesticides and doubling global funding for nature conservation.
More pragmatically, integrating biodiversity into business practices is an economic and environmental imperative for companies. Those that can measure and reduce their impact on biodiversity through such tools will be better positioned to thrive in a world where conservation has become a top priority.
This alarming IPBES study on the dependence between economy and biodiversity testifies: "land degradation has reduced the productivity of the entire global land surface by 23%; part of the world's annual agricultural production, with a market value of up to US$577 billion, faces the risk of pollinator extinction and 100 to 300 million people are at increased risk of floods and hurricanes due to the loss of coastal habitats and their protection."
Although a founding concept of the natural sciences, Biodiversity has always been the poor relation of environmental struggles and has only recently found its place on the political map. It is therefore interesting to focus on it through ecosystem services in order to highlight the challenges it faces.
Ecosystem services, defined as the tangible and intangible benefits we receive from biodiversity, play a critical role in our well-being and survival. We can distinguish four main categories that are involved in all our interactions with nature:
Unfortunately, while ecosystems continue to influence our lives, we are degrading them at an ever-increasing rate, through the artificialization of soils, the infiltration of wastewater... To meet these challenges, conservation and sustainable management strategies are needed. This involves assessing our impact and implementing individual and public practices to protect biodiversity.
The first step is therefore to measure our impact, but this is complex due to the many ways in which humans interact with their ecosystems. France is leading the way with the Global Biodiversity Score, developed by CDC Biodiversité and OFB, which makes it possible to quantify the impact of our economic activity on nature. The GBS uses an innovative unit of measurement, the "MSA per km²" (Mean Species Abundance), to quantify the area affected by an economic activity.
Specifically, an MSA.m² represents the conversion of one square meter of undisturbed natural area (e.g. primary forest) into a completely artificial area (e.g. a tarmac car park). The GBS therefore provides you with the fictitious natural area that your company artificializes. To achieve this, the GBS transforms consumption, emissions, and land rights data from a meta-database of scientific data into MSA.m².
Greenscope uses another MSA standard in its Corporate Biodiversity Footprint (CBF) calculation tool. It models the impact of companies on biodiversity through four key environmental pressures: land-use change, climate change (greenhouse gases), air pollution and water pollution. The advantage of this tool is its operational and realistic approach, which allows for more concrete action plans.
While the GBS and CBF assess the company's impact on biodiversity, others focus on the company's ability to adapt to ecological change. This is the case of the Encore (Exploring Natural Capital Opportunities, Risks and Exposure) tool, developed by the Natural Capital Finance Alliance in collaboration with UNEP-WCMC, an United Nations Environment Programme.
It lists 21 ecosystem services on which companies depend to carry out their activities and allows us to calculate our dependence on each of these services. This qualitative analysis of our dependence on ecosystem services allows us to estimate the exposure of our portfolio or business to the disruption and scarcity of one or more ecosystem services.
The growing recognition of these valuation standards is good news for biodiversity governance, which has long suffered from a lack of media coverage. Indeed, despite the urgency of the issue - of the 8 million plant and animal species identified, 1 million are threatened with extinction - the biodiversity COP makes few headlines compared to the climate COP.
However, the last one - Montreal in 2022 - gave shape to the Kunming-Montreal Agreement, which sets a global target of protecting 30% of the planet, restoring 30% of ecosystems, halving the risks from pesticides and doubling global funding for nature conservation.
More pragmatically, integrating biodiversity into business practices is an economic and environmental imperative for companies. Those that can measure and reduce their impact on biodiversity through such tools will be better positioned to thrive in a world where conservation has become a top priority.
This alarming IPBES study on the dependence between economy and biodiversity testifies: "land degradation has reduced the productivity of the entire global land surface by 23%; part of the world's annual agricultural production, with a market value of up to US$577 billion, faces the risk of pollinator extinction and 100 to 300 million people are at increased risk of floods and hurricanes due to the loss of coastal habitats and their protection."