The Biodiversity Consultancy Ltd reposted this
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a powerful approach to help organisations understand the impacts of entire company value chains on biodiversity. Several reporting frameworks (e.g. CSRD, TNFD) ask companies to take a whole lifecycle approach – recognizing that large impacts can be embedded within the lifecycles of business products and activities. But it is important to interrogate the outputs of these models, and understand the sources of uncertainty that can influence the results – which are often poorly understood and communicated. In a recent pre-print - https://lnkd.in/dS-MwtRT - we outline the risks and opportunities of using LCA approaches for biodiversity footprinting. We describe the various sources of uncertainty, and show how these can have substantial influence on estimates of biodiversity impact. Without a clear understanding of these uncertainties, there are thus risks to organizations using LCA results as part of biodiversity strategy design. We outline clear opportunities for gaining a more robust knowledge of these uncertainties, and provide recommendations for using LCAs to help ensure they guide appropriate and effective action to mitigate business impacts on biodiversity. The article below summarizes the initial take-aways from the work. The full pre-print is available online, so we’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Please do get in touch if you’d like to discuss. Thanks to all coauthors (Alice Bouchez, Isobel Hawkins, Sophus zu Ermgassen, Joe W Bull, Harriet Bartlett, Leon Bennun, Lizzie Biggs, Hollie Booth, Mike Clark, Sami El Geneidy, Graham Prescott, Laura Sonter, Malcolm Starkey, E.J. Milner-Gulland) and Talitha Bromwich who jointly led the work.
Sasha Cisar
1mo
Very interesting Thomas White! We trialed biodiversity data from ISS ESG, which they developed with Quantis, based on a impact assessment of corporates‘ activities and supply chains. The resulting assessment yielded PDF/MSA metrics and ecosystem services dependency. For us, this represents a view on an investment universe rather than interrogating one specific company. Also, I am curious how that will align or clash with impact assessments of corporates as part of CSRD/TNFD. In anyway, I look forward to reading your paper!
Ziqian Xia
1mo
Very helpful!
Darya Boukata
1mo
Excellent work!
Postdoctoral Researcher / Principal Consultant - Conservation Science
1moDepartment of Biology, University of Oxford, The Biodiversity Consultancy Ltd, Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science, The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery