Biodiversity Assessment Initiatives

Biodiversity Assessment Initiatives and existing methodologies & tools for biodiversity metrics

The LIFE project "Biodiversity in Standards and Labels for the Food Industry" was recognised in 2016 as a core initiative of the UN programme "Sustainable Food Systems". This programme is coordinated by the UN in cooperation with the FAO.

Since then, GNF, Solagro and Lake Constance Foundation have been working intensively with other initiatives that have set themselves the goal of making aspects of biological diversity measurable and comparable in order to include them in company decisions. While the Recommendations to Improve Biodiversity Protection should have a positive effect on existing agricultural land, IUCN, ETH Zurich, Nestlé and others are working on taking biodiversity into account in the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). When selecting a production site or designing a product, it is important to select the alternative that has the least negative impact on biodiversity. Not an easy task!

The publication "Biodiversity Assessment Initiatives - Guide for Decision Makers", which we have published as a Core Initiative, provides an overview of some of the instruments available for this purpose - and how they work.

The "Technical report on existing methodologies & tools for biodiversity metrics" provides a description of key existing methodologies and tools to evaluate biodiversity, and an analytical mapping of these methodologies and tools. The report is complemented by a link to an external compilation of case studies (third section), which illustrates applications of the methods described. In the last section, we evaluate required next steps to make the included biodiversity assessments operational.

 Biodiversity Assessment Initiatives

 
 Marion Hammerl

Marion Hammerl

Lake Constance Foundation
+49 7732 9995 45
marion.hammerl@bodensee-stiftung.org